Chapter 1

In the guide-books it figured as Stanyon Castle; on the tongues of the villagers, it was the Castle; the Polite World spoke of it as Stanyon, as it spoke of Woburn, and of Cheveley. It was situated in Lincolnshire, not very many miles from Grantham, rather nearer to Stamford: a locality considered by those who were more interested in the chase than in any particular grandeur of scenery to be admirable. It had more claim to be called a Castle than many another nobleman’s seat. A mediaeval fortress, of which various not very interesting records were to be found in the muniment room, now used by Mr. Theodore Frant as an office, had previously stood upon the site; and such portions of the ancient building as had survived the passage of time had been incorporated into the Tudor manor which had succeeded the fortress. Later generations had enlarged and beautified the structure much as their fancies dictated, any difficulty of adding to the mansion being overcome by the designing of another court. The Frant who survived friendship with Bluff King Hal scandalized his generation by the lavish use of oak for wainscoting; his grandson, having enjoyed the advantages of travel, built a new wing, and embellished the old with gildings and painted ceilings; a later Frant, succumbing to the prevailing fashion, ran riot in the rococo style, created the Fountain Court, and was prevented only by death from attempting something of a still more grandiose conception; his heir, one of Mr. Walpole’s more fervid adherents, reverted to the Gothick, and by the time an unlucky fall at a regular stitcher, when out with the Old Club, put a period to his career, nowhere in England could have been found such massive doors of oak, such ponderous iron latches, so many pointed, narrow windows, as at Stanyon.

The sixth Earl of St. Erth, possibly thinking that his principal seat already sprawled over too much ground, more probably prevented from adding a wing in the Palladian style by the straitened times in which he had the ill-fortune to live, contented himself with rebuilding the stables, papering a great many of the rooms, and installing a closed-stove in the enormous kitchen. This was declared by an embittered valet to be the only sign of modern civilization in the entire pile; but the head-cook, mistrusting modernity, allowed it to be used merely for the boiling of vegetables by one of his underlings, while he himself continued to preside over his furnace, with its antiquated ovens, its huge spits, and its iron cauldrons. Unaccustomed guests, wandering distractedly down ill-lit galleries, discovering stairs that led only to uncharted domestic regions, and arriving, flustered and exhausted, where they had been for long attended, had been known to express astonishment that anyone should choose to live in such a rabbit-warren when he owned two other and more convenient country residences. Neither of these, it was true, could boast of Great Halls, Minstrels’ Galleries, Armouries, Towers, or Moats: on the other hand, no draughts whistled down their passages; no creeping chill arose from damp walls; and their chimneys very rarely smoked.

Neither the sixth Earl nor his second wife perceived anything amiss with Stanyon: the Earl because it was the home of his childhood, his lady because she had been bred in an even more inconvenient mansion in the bleak north, and would, in any event, have unhesitatingly bartered comfort for pomp, had she been offered a choice in the matter. The Earl’s first wife had hated Stanyon. But the Earl’s first wife, though admittedly a lady of birth and quite remarkable beauty, had proved herself to have been quite unworthy of the high position she was called upon to fill. Before her son was out of leading-strings, she ran away with a notorious rake. Her lord, cuckolded, betrayed, and turned into a laughing-stock, expunged her name from the family records, permitted no mention of her to be made within his walls, and scarcely thought himself avenged when he learned that she had died, three years after her flight, in conditions of distress and hardship. His steward and his housekeeper, both persons of sentiment, hoped that upon his deathbed he would remember her, and speak of her with a forgiving tongue, for it seemed to them incredible that so gentle and lovely a lady should hold no place in his heart or memory. They even indulged their fancies by supposing that his overt dislike of his elder son was caused by the secret pangs the sight of the fair boy, who was indeed the image of his mother, caused him to feel. But if the Reverend Felix Clowne, my lord’s Chaplain, was to be believed, the Earl’s last coherent speech, forcibly phrased if feebly uttered, was a complaint that the wine he had commanded his valet to bring to his room was corked. He had earlier bestowed his blessing upon Martin, his younger son; he had had a kind word for Theodore, his nephew; he had taken punctilious leave of his lady; he had sent proper messages to his married daughter; but the names of his first wife and of his heir had not passed his lips. Nor had his heir arrived at Stanyon to attend his death-bed, although it was certain that Mr. Theodore Frant had sent a letter express to him in Flanders, warning him that his father’s demise was imminent. Captain Viscount Desborough, as he then was styled, was at Mons, with his regiment, and it was conceivable that a high sense of his military duties had prevented him from applying for furlough at a moment when Napoleon was almost hourly expected to cross the frontier. But the seventh Earl, surviving a minor, but rather bloody, engagement at the village of Genappe, and a major engagement at Waterloo, still showed no disposition to return to the home of his ancestors. He sold out, but he remained on the Continent, reposing the fullest confidence in his cousin’s ability to administer his estates. Not until twelve calendar months had passed since his father’s death did his cousin, and the Dowager Countess, receive tidings from him that he was in England, and about to take possession of his inheritance. He wrote a very civil letter to his stepmother, informing her of the proposed date of his arrival at Stanyon, and enquiring in the politest way after her health, and the healths of his half-brother and sister. It was a very pretty letter, the Dowager allowed, but, she added, in unhopeful accents, his mother had had just such caressing ways, and had shown herself to be a Snake in the Bosom.

“I should perhaps warn you, ma’am, that my cousin will not relish animadversions upon the character of his mother,” said Mr. Theodore Frant, a little tight-lipped. “In his presence, such remarks should be spared.”

“My dear Theo,” responded the Dowager, “it would be odd indeed if I were to be obliged to consult you on the observances of civility!” He bowed, and, because she cherished no ill-will towards him, she said graciously: “Or anyone else, I am sure! In this house, Desborough — or, as I must learn to call him, St. Erth-may be sure of every attention called for by his consequence.”

“Just so, ma’am,” Mr. Frant said, bowing again.

“Providence has decreed that he should succeed to his dear father’s honours,” pronounced the Dowager, thinking poorly of Providence. “One might have supposed that military service in the Peninsula — a very unhealthy locality, I understand, setting aside the chances of Violent Death in an engagement, which cannot be altogether precluded — might have rendered the present occasion unnecessary. But it was not to be! Had my advice been sought, I should have considered myself bound to state that a military career, for one whom I should have had no hesitation in declaring to be far from robust, could be little short of Fatal! That, my dear Theo, I must have said, for, whatever must be my maternal feelings, if there be one thing upon which I pride myself it is my observance of my duty as a Christian! Happily, as it then seemed (though, according to the workings of an inscrutable fate, it now appears to be a circumstance of little moment), my advice was not sought. Since Lady Penistone chose to interest herself so particularly in her grandson, and my dear husband saw nothing objectionable in the connection, it was not for me to raise my voice. On her head, I said at the time, be the outcome! No doubt her ladyship is a good enough sort of a woman in her way: I do her the justice to acknowledge that she did not,as one might have feared she would, from the incurable levity of her behaviour, condone her unhappy daughter’s misconduct: but if she petted and indulged Desborough from any other motive than a malicious desire to tease my poor husband I shall own myself astonished! A spiritless boy, I always thought him, with too much reserve to be pleasing. His career at Eton, you know, was quite undistinguished: a very odd sort of a soldier he must have been!”

“It is some years since you have seen my cousin, ma’am,” Mr. Frant interposed, in a measured tone.

“I hope,” said the Dowager, “I am not to be blamed for that! If Lady Penistone chose to invite the boy to stay with her during his school-vacations, and my lord to acquiesce in the arrangement, I take heaven to witness that it was by no expressed wish of mine that Desborough ceased to regard Stanyon as his natural home! On every head my conscience is easy: while he was a child I did my duty towards him; and I am determined now that as no word of censure for his conduct in absenting himself from a beloved parent’s obsequies shall be permitted to pass my lips, so also no mark of the respect due to the Head of the Family shall be unobserved. I shall receive him in the Hall.”

This momentous decision being faithfully adhered to, a chilly afternoon in spring saw five persons assembled in what had once been the Great Hall of the Castle. The artistic energies of several generations had largely obliterated most of its original features, but the hammer-beams in its lofty roof remained, and a vast fireplace, made to accommodate the better part of several tree-trunks. The carved screens, having been discovered to have become worm-eaten, had been removed in a previous age, the apartment being thrown open to the vestibule, or entrance-hall, situated at right-angles to it. From this smaller apartment the Grand Staircase, erected in the latter half of the seventeenth century on a scale designed to allow some dozen persons to walk up it abreast, rose in one imposing flight to a broad half-landing, whence it branched to right and left, thus attaining the main gallery of the Castle. Several massive doors strengthened by applied iron-straps, besides the great front-door opposite to the staircase, opened on to the vestibule, a circumstance which added nothing to the comfort of the Hall, in itself a passage to a series of saloons beyond it. The heat thrown out by the logs burning in the fireplace was considerable, but was unavailing to prevent the draughts sweeping through the room. These seemed to come from all quarters, even the heavy curtains which had been drawn across the windows composing almost the entire long wall opposite the fireplace being continually stirred by them. It was dusk, and candles had been lit in the sconces as well as in the several candelabra which stood on the various tables. The little tongues of flame flickered continually, causing the wax to melt unevenly, and making it impossible for one of the persons assembled in the Hall to set the stitches in her embroidery with any degree of accuracy. Having twice changed her seat to no purpose, she folded the work, and replaced it in a tapestry-bag, drawing forth, in its stead, a prosaic piece of knitting, with which she proceeded to occupy herself, in the manner of one prepared to make the best, without comment, of adverse conditions.

The furnishings of the Hall might have been taken as an example of the heterogeneous nature of the whole Castle, few of the pieces which it contained having been chosen with any nicety of judgment. A fine refectory table, pushed under the windows, and several carved oak chairs with wooden seats, were the only objects which bore any particular relation to their surroundings, the rest of the furniture consisting of pieces representative of every age and style, and including a modern and very ugly side-table, with a marble top, supported by brazen gryphons’ heads. Two suits of armour of the surcoatless period guarded the entrance, and several shields, pikes, halberds, and gisarmes were arranged upon the wall above the high plaster mantelpiece. These were flanked by a full-length portrait of the late Earl, leaning negligently with one leg crossed over the other, against the shoulder of his horse; and a fine Battle-piece, of which the most noticeable features were the arresting figure of the commanding officer in the foreground, and the smoke issuing in woolly balls from the mouths of innumerable cannons.

Only one of the five persons gathered round the fireplace in expectation of the Earl’s arrival seemed to be conscious of the discomfort of her situation, and she made no complaint, merely shifting her chair so that the leaping flames should not scorch her face, and pinning her shawl securely across her shoulders to protect them from the cold blast from the vestibule. The Dowager Countess, regally enthroned in a wing-chair, with her feet upon a stool, was indifferent to draughts; neither her son, Martin, moodily standing before the fire, and kicking at a smouldering log, nor Mr. Theodore Frant, engaged in snuffing a candle in the branch set in the centre of the refectory table, was aware of any unusual chilliness; and the Chaplain, seated at her ladyship’s left hand, had long since become inured to the Spartan conditions prevailing at Stanyon, and had pronounced the gathering to be very snugly placed. This tribute earned him a gracious smile from the Dowager, who said that it had frequently been remarked that few fires gave out so fierce a heat as this one. She then desired Miss Morville, in a voice of mingled civility and condescension, to be so good as to run up to the Crimson Saloon, and to fetch from it a little hand-screen. Miss Morville at once laid aside her knitting, and departed on her errand; and, as though her absence released him from constraint, Martin looked up from his scowling scrutiny of the fire, and exclaimed: “This is a curst business! I wish it were well over! Why must we kick our heels here, waiting on his pleasure? The lord knows we don’t want him! I have a very good mind to ride over to eat my mutton with Barny!”

His cousin looked frowningly at him for a moment, but said nothing. Another candle needed attention, and he dealt with it methodically. He was a powerfully built man, nearing his thirtieth birthday, with a resolute, rather square countenance, and a good deal of reserve in his manner. The cast of his features bore a certain resemblance to that of his young cousin’s, but the likeness existed merely in the aquiline trend of the nose, the sightly heavy line of the jaw, and the set of the eyes under brows which overhung them enough to give a forbidding look to the face. The colour of his eyes was a clear, light gray, as cool and as inexpressive as lake-water; his mouth, with its firmly closed lips, betrayed no secrets, but seemed to show that its owner, besides possessing resolution of character, knew how to keep his own counsel. His address was good, and his manner had all the quiet assurance of his breeding.

With Martin, it was otherwise. Every change of mood was reflected in his eyes, so dark a brown as to appear almost black, and in the sensitive curves of his full mouth. Six years younger than his cousin, he had not altogether thrown off the boy; and, from having been the idol of his mother and the pet of his father, he was a good deal spoiled, impatient of restraint, thrown into the sulks by trifling causes, and into wild rages by obstacles to his plans. Treated from his earliest youth as though he, and not his half-brother, had been his father’s heir, it was not to be expected that he could face with equanimity the succession of the seventh Earl. A vague belief that his brother would not survive the rigours of the campaign in Spain had fostered in him the unexplored thought that he would one day step into his father’s shoes; the emergence of the seventh Earl, unscathed, from the war found him unprepared, and filled him, when his first shocked incredulity had passed, with a sense of burning resentment. He had only a slight recollection of the brother seven years his senior, his memory retaining little beyond the impression of a fair, quiet boy, with a gentle manner, and a very soft voice; but he was sure that he would dislike him. He said, with a defiant glance cast in the direction of his impassive cousin: “I daresay it is past six o’clock already! When are we to dine? If he thinks to bring town ways to Stanyon, I for one won’t bear it!”

“Do not put yourself about, my dear!” recommended his parent. “Dinner must for this once await his convenience, but with all his faults his disposition was always compliant. I assure you, I do not expect to find our style of living overset by any fashionable nonsense which he may have learnt in Lady Penistone’s establishment. That would not suit me at all, and I am not quite nobody at Stanyon, I believe!”

This announcement, being plainly in the nature of a pleasantry, caused Mr. Clowne to laugh a little, and to say: “Indeed your ladyship is not nobody! Such a whimsical fancy must really quite startle anyone unacquainted with those flashes of wit we know so well!” He encountered a sardonic look from Theodore, and added hastily. “How many years it is since I have had the pleasure of meeting his lordship! How much he will have to tell us of his experiences! I am sure we shall all hang upon his lips!”

“Hang upon his lips!” exclaimed Martin, with one of his fiery looks. “Ay! toad-eat him to the top of his bent! I shall not do so! I wish he were underground!”

“Take care what you say!” interposed his cousin sternly.

Martin flushed, looking a little conscious, but said in a sullen tone: “Well, I do wish it, but of course I don’t mean anything! You need not be so quick to take me up!”

“Military anecdotes are never acceptable to me,” said the Dowager, as though the brief interchange between the cousins had not occurred. “I have no intention of encouraging Desborough to enlarge upon his experiences in Spain. The reflections of a General must always be of value — though I fancy we have heard enough of the late war: those of a junior officer can only weary his auditors.”

“You need feel no alarm on that score, ma’am,” said Theodore. “My cousin has not altered so much!”

This was uttered so dryly that the Chaplain felt himself impelled to step into a possible breach. “Ah, Mr. Theodore, you remind us that you are the only one amongst us who can claim to know his lordship! You have frequently been meeting him, while we — ”

“I have met him occasionally,” interrupted Theodore. “His employment abroad has not made frequent meetings possible.”

“Just so — precisely as I was about to remark! But you know him well enough to have a kindness for him!”

“I have always had a great kindness for him, sir.”

The reappearance of Miss Morville, bearing a small firescreen set upon an ebony stick, which she handed to the Dowager, created a timely diversion. The Dowager bestowed a smile upon her, saying that she was very much obliged to her. “I do not know how I shall bear to relinquish you to your worthy parents when they return from the Lakes, for I am sure I shall miss you excessively. My daughter — Lady Grampound, you know — is for ever advising me to employ some genteel person to bear me company, and to run my little errands for me. If ever I should decide to do so I shall offer the post to you,I promise you!”

Miss Morville, not so swift as Mr. Clowne to recognize her ladyship’s wit, replied to this pleasantry in a practical spirit. “Well, it is very kind in you to think you would like to have me to live with you, ma’am,” she said, “but I do not think it would suit me, for I should not have nearly enough to do.”

“You like to be very busy, don’t you?” Theodore said, smiling at her in some amusement.

“Yes,” she replied, seating herself again in her chair, and resuming her knitting. She added thoughtfully: “It is to be hoped that I shall never be obliged to seek such a post, for my disposition is not meek, and would render me ineligible for any post but that, perhaps, of housekeeper.”

This prosaic observation appeared to daunt the company. A silence fell, which was broken by the ubiquitous Mr. Clowne, who said archly: “What do you think of, Miss Morville, while your hands are so busy? Or must we not seek to know?”

She looked rather surprised, but replied with the utmost readiness: “I was wondering whether I should not, after all, make the foot a little longer. When they are washed at home, you know, they don’t shrink; but it is sadly different at Cambridge! I should think the washerwomen there ought to be ashamed of themselves!”

Finding that this reflection evoked no response from the assembled company, she again applied herself to her work, and continued to be absorbed in it until Martin, who had quick ears, jerked up his head, and ejaculated: “A carriage! At last!”

At the same moment, an added draught informed the initiated that the door beyond the Grand Staircase had been opened; there was a subdued noise of bustle in the vestibule, and the sound of trampling hooves in the carriage-drive. Miss Morville finished knitting her row, folded the sock, and bestowed it neatly in the tapestry-bag. Though Martin nervously fingered his cravat, the Dowager betrayed by no sign that she had heard the sounds of an arrival. Mr. Clowne, taking his cue from her, lent a spuriously eager ear to the platitude which fell from her lips; and Theodore, glancing from one to the other, seemed to hesitate to put himself forward.

A murmur of voices from the vestibule indicated that Abney, the butler, had thrown open the doors to receive his new master. Several persons, including the Steward, and a couple of footmen, were bowing, and falling back obsequiously; and in another instant a slim figure came into view. Only Miss Morville, seated in a chair with its back turned to the vestibule, was denied this first glimpse of the seventh Earl. Either from motives of good manners, or from lack of interest, she refrained from peeping round the back of her chair; and the Dowager, to mark her approbation, addressed another of her majestic platitudes to her.

All that could at first be seen of the seventh Earl was a classic profile, under the brim of a high-crowned beaver; a pair of gleaming Hessians, and a drab coat of many capes and graceful folds, which enveloped him from chin to ankle. His voice was heard: a soft voice, saying to the butler: “Thank you! Yes, I remember you very well: you are Abney. And you, I think, must be my steward. Perran, is it not? I am very glad to see you again.”

He turned, as though aware of the eyes which watched him, and stood foursquare to the Hall, seeing his stepmother, her imposing form gowned in purple satin, a turban set upon her gray locks, her Roman nose elevated; his half-brother, standing scowling before the fireplace, one hand gripping the high mantelshelf, the other dug into the pocket of his satin breeches; his cousin, standing a little in the background, and slightly smiling at him; his Chaplain, torn between curiosity and his allegiance to the Dowager. He regarded them thoughtfully, while with one hand he removed the beaver from his head, and held it out, and with the other he relinquished his gloves and his cane into the care of a footman. His hat was reverently taken from him by Abney, who murmured: “Your coat, my lord!”

“My coat, yes: in a moment!” the Earl said, moving unhurriedly towards the Hall.

An instant Theodore hesitated, waiting for the Dowager or for Martin to make some sign; then he strode forward, with his hands held out, exclaiming: “Gervase, my dear fellow! Welcome!”

Martin, his affronted stare taking in the number of the capes of that drab coat, the high polish on the Hessian boots, the extravagant points of a shirt-collar, and the ordered waves of guinea-gold hair above a white brow, muttered audibly: “Good God! the fellow’s nothing but a curst dandy! ”

Chapter 2

The flicker of a quizzical look, cast in Martin’s direction, betrayed that his half-brother had heard his involuntary exclamation. Before the ready flush had surged up to the roots of his hair, Gervase was no longer looking at him, but was shaking his cousin’s hand, smiling at him, and saying: “How do you do, Theo? You see I do keep my promises: I have come!”

Theo held his slender hand an instant longer, pressing it slightly. “One year past! You are a villain!”

“Ah, yes, but you see I must have gone into black gloves, and really I could not bring myself to do so!” He drew his hand away, and advanced into the Hall, towards his stepmother’s chair.

She did not rise, but she extended her hand to him. “Well, and so you have come at last, St. Erth! I am happy to see you here, though, to be sure, I scarcely expected ever to do so! I do not know why you could not have come before, but you were always a strange, whimsical creature, and I daresay I shall not find that you have changed.”

“Dear ma’am, believe me, it is the greatest satisfaction to me to be able to perceive, at a glance, that you have not changed — not by so much as a hairsbreadth!” Gervase responded, bowing over her hand.

So sweetly were the words uttered, that everyone, except the Dowager, was left in doubt of their exact significance. The Dowager, who would have found it hard to believe that she could be the object of satire, was unmoved. “No, I fancy I do not alter,” she said complacently. “No doubt, however, you see a great change in your brother.”

“A great change,” agreed Gervase, holding out his hand to Martin, and scanning him out of his smiling, blue eyes. “Can you be my little brother? It seems so unlikely! I should not have recognized you.” He turned, offering hand and smile to the Chaplain. “But Mr. Clowne I must certainly have known anywhere! How do you do?”

The Chaplain, who, from the moment of the Earl’s handing his hat to Abney, had stood staring at him as though he could not drag his eyes from his face, seemed to be a trifle shaken, and answered with much less than his usual urbanity: “And I you, my lord! For one moment it was as though — Your lordship must forgive me! Memory serves one some strange tricks.”

“You mean, I think, that I am very like my mother,” said Gervase. “I am glad — though it is a resemblance which has brought upon me in the past much that I wish to forget.”

“It has frequently been remarked,” stated the Dowager, “that Martin is the very likeness of all the Frants.”

“You are too severe, ma’am,” said Gervase gently.

“Let me tell you, St. Erth, that if I favour the Frants I am devilish glad to hear it!” said Martin.

“Tell me anything you wish, my dear Martin!” said Gervase encouragingly.

His young relative was not unnaturally smitten to silence, and stood glaring at him. The Dowager said in a voice of displeasure: “I have the greatest dislike of such trifling talk as this. I shall make you known to Miss Morville, St. Erth.”

Bows were exchanged; the Earl murmured that he was happy to make Miss Morville’s acquaintance; and Miss Morville, accepting the civility with equanimity, pointed out to him, in a helpful spirit, that Abney was still waiting to relieve him of his driving-coat.

“Of course — yes!” said Gervase, allowing the butler to help him out of his coat, and standing revealed in all the fashionable elegance of dove-coloured pantaloons, and a silver-buttoned coat of blue superfine. A quizzing-glass hung on a black riband round his neck, and he raised this to one eye, seeming to observe, for the first time, the knee-breeches worn by his brother and his cousin, and the glory of his stepmother’s low-cut gown of purple satin. “Oh, I am afraid I have kept you waiting for me!” he said apologetically. “Now what is to be done? Will you permit me, ma’am, to sit down to dinner in all my dirt, or shall I change my clothes while your dinner spoils?”

“It would take you an hour, I daresay!” Martin remarked, with a curling lip.

“Oh, more than that!” replied Gervase gravely.

“I am not, in general, an advocate for a man’s sitting down to dine in his walking-dress,” announced the Dowager. “I consider such a practice slovenly, and slovenliness I abhor! In certain cases it may be thought, however, to be allowable. We will dine immediately, Abney.”

The Earl, taking up a position before the fire, beside his brother, drew a Sevres snuff-box from his pocket, and, opening it with a dexterous flick of his thumb, took a pinch of the mixture it contained, and raised it to one nostril. An unusual signet-ring, which he wore, and which seemed, at one moment, dull and dark, and at another, when he moved his hand so that the ring caught the light, to glow with green fire, attracted his stepmother’s attention. “What is that ring you have upon your finger, St. Erth?” she demanded. “It appears to me to be a signet!”

“Why, so it is, ma’am!” he replied, raising his brows in mild surprise.

“How comes this about? Your father’s ring was delivered to you by your cousin’s hand I do not know how many months ago! All the Earls of St. Erth have worn it, for five generations — I daresay more!”

“Yes, I prefer my own,” said the Earl tranquilly.

“Upon my word!” the Dowager ejaculated, her bosom swelling. “I have not misunderstood you, I suppose! You prefer a trumpery ring of your own to an heirloom!”

“I wonder,” mused the Earl, pensively regarding his ring, “whether some Earl of St. Erth as yet unborn — my great-great-grandson, perhaps — will be told the same, when he does not choose to wear this ring of mine?”

A high colour mounted to the Dowager’s cheeks; before she could speak, however, the matter-of-fact voice of Miss Morville made itself heard. “Very likely,” she said. “Modes change, you know, and what one generation may admire another will frequently despise. My Mama, for instance, has a set of garnets which I consider quite hideous, and shan’t know what to do with, when they belong to me.”

“Filial piety will not force you to wear them, Miss Morville?”

“I shouldn’t think it would,” she responded, giving the matter some consideration.

“Your Mama’s garnets, my dear Drusilla — no doubt very pretty in their way! — can scarcely be compared to the Frant ring!” said the Dowager. “I declare, when I hear St. Erth saying that he prefers some piece of trumpery — ”

“No, no, I never said so!” interrupted the Earl. “You really must not call it trumpery, my dear ma’am! A very fine emerald, cut to my order. I daresay you might never see just such another, for they are rare, you know. I am informed that there is considerable difficulty experienced in cutting them to form signets.”

“I know nothing of such matters, but I am shocked — excessively shocked! Your father would have been very glad to have left his ring to Martin, let me tell you, only he thought it not right to leave it away from the heir!”

“Was it indeed a personal bequest?” enquired Gervase, interested. “That certainly must be held to enhance its value. It becomes, in fact, a curio, for it must be quite the only piece of unentailed property which my father did bequeathe to me. I shall put it in a glass cabinet.”

Martin, reddening, said: “I see what you are at! I’m not to be blamed if my father preferred me to you!”

“No, you are to be felicitated,” said Gervase.

“My lord! Mr. Martin!” said the Chaplain imploringly.

Neither brother, hot brown eyes meeting cool blue ones, gave any sign of having heard him, but the uncomfortable interlude was brought to a close by the entrance of the butler, announcing that dinner was served.

There were two dining-rooms at Stanyon, one of which was only used when the family dined alone. Both were situated on the first floor of the Castle, at the end of the east wing, and were reached by way of the Grand Stairway, the Italian Saloon, and a broad gallery, known as the Long Drawing-room. Access to them was also to be had through two single doors, hidden by screens, but these led only to the precipitous stairs which descended to the kitchens. The family dining-room was rather smaller than the one used for formal occasions, but as its mahogany table was made to accommodate some twenty persons without crowding it seemed very much too large for the small party assembled in it. The Dowager established herself at the foot of the table, and directed her son and the Chaplain to the places laid on her either side. Martin, who had gone unthinkingly to the head of the table, recollected the change in his circumstances, muttered something indistinguishable, and moved away from it. The Dowager waved Miss Morville to the seat on the Earl’s right; and Theodore took the chair opposite to her. Since the centre of the table supported an enormous silver epergne, presented to the Earl’s grandfather by the East India Company, and composed of a temple, surrounded by palms, elephants, tigers, sepoys, and palanquins, tastefully if somewhat improbably arranged, the Earl and his stepmother were unable to see one another, and conversation between the two ends of the table was impossible. Nor did it flourish between neighbours, since the vast expanse of napery separating them gave them a sense of isolation it was difficult to overcome. The Dowager indeed, maintained, in her penetrating voice, a flow of very uninteresting small-talk, which consisted largely of exact explanations of the various relationships in which she stood to every one of the persons she mentioned; but conversation between St. Erth, his cousin and Miss Morville was of a desultory nature. By the time Martin had three times craned his neck to address some remark to Theo, obscured from his view by the epergne, the Earl had reached certain decisions which he lost no time in putting into force. No sooner had the Dowager borne Miss Morville away to the Italian Saloon than he said: “Abney!”

“My lord?”

“Has this table any leaves?”

“It has many, my lord!” said the butler, staring at him.

“Remove them, if you please.”

“ Remove them, my lord?”

“Not just at once, of course, but before I sit at the table again. Also that thing!”

“The epergne, my lord?” Abney faltered. “Where — where would your lordship desire it to be put?”

The Earl regarded it thoughtfully. “A home question, Abney. Unless you know of a dark cupboard, perhaps, where it could be safely stowed away?”

“My mother,” stated Martin, ready for a skirmish, “has a particular fondness for that piece!”

“How very fortunate!” returned St. Erth. “Do draw your chair to this end of the table, Martin! and you too, Mr. Clowne! Abney, have the epergne conveyed to her ladyship’s sitting-room!”

Theo looked amused, but said under his breath: “Gervase, for God’s sake — !”

“You will not have that thing put into my mother’s room!” exclaimed Martin, a good deal startled.

“Don’t you think she would like to have it? If she has a particular fondness for it, I should not wish to deprive her of it.”

“She will wish it to be left where it has always stood, and so I tell you! And if I know Mama,” he added, with relish, “I’ll wager that’s what will happen!”

“Oh, I shouldn’t do that!” Gervase said. “You see, you don’t know me, and it is never wise to bet against a dark horse.”

“I suppose that you think, just because you’re St. Erth now, that you may turn Stanyon upside down, if you choose!” growled Martin, a little nonplussed.

“Well, yes,” replied Gervase. “I do think it, but you must not let it distress you, for I really shan’t quite do that!”

“We shall see what Mama has to say!” was all Martin could think of to retort.

The Dowager’s comments, when the fell tidings were presently divulged to her, were at once comprehensive and discursive, and culminated in an unwise announcement that Abney would take his orders from his mistress.

“Oh, I hope he will not!” said Gervase. “I should be very reluctant to dismiss a servant who has been for so many years employed in the family!” He smiled down into the Dowager’s astonished face, and added, in his gentle way: “But I have too great a dependence on your sense of propriety, ma’am, to suppose that you would issue any orders at Stanyon which ran counter to mine.”

Everyone but Miss Morville, who was studying the Fashion Notes in the Ladies’ periodical, waited with suspended breath for the climax to this engagement. They were disappointed, or relieved, according to their several dispositions, when the Dowager said, after a short silence, pregnant with passion: “You will do as you please in your own home, St. Erth! Pray do not hesitate to inform me if you desire me to remove to the Dower House immediately!”

“Ah, no! I should be sorry to see you do so, ma’am!” replied Gervase. “Such a house as Stanyon would be a sad place without a mistress!” Her face snowed no sign of relenting, and he added, in a coaxing tone: “Do not be vexed with me! Must we quarrel? Indeed, I do not wish to stand upon bad terms with you!”

“I can assure you that no quarrel between us will be of my seeking,” said the Dowager austerely. “A very odd thing it would be if I were to be picking quarrels with my stepson! Pray be so good as to apprise me, in the future, of the arrangements which you desire to alter at Stanyon!”

“Thank you!” Gervase said, bowing.

The meekness in his voice made his cousin’s brows draw together a little; but Martin evidently considered that his mother had lost the first bout, for he uttered a disgusted exclamation, and flung out of the room in something very like a tantrum.

The Dowager, ignoring, in a lofty spirit, the entire incident, then desired Theo to ring for a card-table to be set up, saying that she had no doubt St. Erth would enjoy a rubber of whist. If Gervase did not look as though these plans for his entertainment were to his taste, his compliant disposition led him to acquiesce docilely in them, and, when a four was presently made up, to submit with equanimity to having his play ruthlessly criticized by his stepmother. His cousin and the Chaplain, after a little argument with Miss Morville, who, however, was resolute in refusing to take a hand, were the other two players; and the game was continued until the tea-tray was brought in at ten o’clock. The Dowager, who had maintained an unwearied commentary throughout on her own and the other three players’ skill (or want of it), the fall of the cards, the rules which governed her play, illustrated by maxims laid down by her father which gave Gervase a very poor opinion of that deceased nobleman’s mental ability, then stated that no one would care to begin another rubber, and rose from the table, and disposed herself in her favourite chair beside the fire. Miss Morville dispensed tea and coffee, a circumstance which made the Earl wonder if she were, after all, one of his stepmother’s dependents. At first glance, he had assumed her to be perhaps a poor relation, or a hired companion; but since the Dowager treated her, if not with any distinguishing attention, at least with perfect civility, he had come to the conclusion that she must be a guest at Stanyon. He was not well-versed in the niceties of female costume, but it seemed to him that she was dressed with propriety, and even a certain quiet elegance. Her gown, which was of white sarsenet, with a pink body, and long sleeves, buttoned tightly round her wrists, was unadorned by the frills of lace or knots of floss with which young ladies of fashion usually embellished their dresses. On the other hand, it was cut low across her plump bosom, in a way which would scarcely have been tolerated in a hired companion; and she wore a very pretty ornament suspended on a gold chain round her throat. Nor was there any trace of obsequiousness in her manners. She inaugurated no conversation, but when she was addressed she answered with composure, and readily. A pink riband, threaded through them, kept her neat curls in place. These were mouse-coloured, and very simply arranged. Her countenance was pleasing without being beautiful, her best feature being a pair of dark eyes, well-opened and straight-gazing. Her figure was trim, but sadly lacking in height, and she was rather short-necked. She employed no arts to attract; the Earl thought her dull.

Family prayers succeeded tea, after which the Dowager withdrew with Miss Morville, charging Theo to conduct St. Erth to his bedchamber. “Not,” she said magnanimously, “that I wish to dictate to you when you should go to bed, for I am sure you may do precisely as you wish, but no doubt you are tired after your journey.”

It did not seem probable that a journey of fifty miles (for the Earl had travelled to Stanyon only from Penistone Hall), in a luxurious chaise, could exhaust a man inured to the rigours of an arduous campaign, but Gervase agreed to it with his usual amiability, bade his stepmother goodnight, and tucked a hand in Theo’s arm, saying: “Well, lead me to bed! Where have they put me?”

“In your father’s room, of course.”

“Oh dear! Must I?”

Theo smiled. “Do my aunt the justice to own that to have allotted any other room to you would have been quite improper!”

The Earl’s bedchamber, which lay in the main, or Tudor, part of the Castle, was a vast apartment, rendered sombre by dark panelling, and crimson draperies. However, several branches of candles had been carried into the room, and a bright fire was burning in the stone hearth. A neat individual, bearing on his person the unmistakable stamp of the gentleman’s gentleman, was awaiting his master there, and had already laid out his night-gear.

“Sit down, Theo!” said St. Erth. “Turvey, tell someone to send up the brandy, and glasses!”

The valet bowed, but said: “Anticipating that your lordship would wish it, I have already procured it from the butler. Allow me, my lord, to pull off your boots!”

The Earl seated himself, and stretched out one leg. His valet, on one knee before him, drew off the Hessian, handling it with loving care, and casting an anxious eye over its shining black surface to detect a possible scratch. He could find none, and, with a sigh of relief, drew off the second boot, and set both down delicately side by side. He then assisted the Earl to take off his close-fitting coat, and held up for him to put on a frogged and padded dressing-gown of brocaded silk. The Earl ripped the intricately tied cravat from his throat, tossed it aside, and nodded dismissal. “Thank you! I will ring when I am ready for you to come back to me.”

The valet bowed, and withdrew, bearing with him the cherished boots. St. Erth poured out two glasses of brandy, gave one to his cousin, and sank into a deep chair on the other side of the fire. Theo, who had blinked at the magnificence of the dressing-gown, openly laughed at him, and said: “I think you must have joined the dandy-set, Gervase!”

“Yes, so Martin seemed to think also,” agreed Gervase, rolling the brandy round his glass.

“Oh — ! You heard that, then?”

“Was I not meant to hear it?”

“I don’t know.” Theo was silent for a moment, looking into the fire, but presently he raised his eyes to his cousin’s face, and said abruptly: “He resents you, Gervase.”

“That has been made plain to me — but not why.”

“Is the reason so hard to seek? You stand between him and the Earldom.”

“But, my dear Theo, so I have always done! I am not a lost heir, returning to oust him from a position he thought his own!”

“Not lost, but I fancy he did think the position might well be his,” Theo replied.

“He seems to me an excessively foolish young man, but he cannot be such a saphead as that!” expostulated Gervase. “Only I could succeed to my father’s room!”

“Very true, but dead men do not succeed,” said Theo dryly.

“Dead men!” Gervase exclaimed, startled and amused.

“My dear Gervase, you have taken part in more than one engagement, and you will own that it could not have been thought surprising had you met your end upon a battlefield. It was, in fact, considered to be a likely contingency.”

“And one that was hoped for?”

“Yes, one that was hoped for.”

The Earl’s face was inscrutable; after a moment, Theo said: “I have shocked you, but it is better to be plain with you, I think. You cannot have supposed that they loved you!”

“Not Lady St. Erth, no! But Martin — !”

“Why should he? He has heard no good of you from my uncle, or from his mother; he has been treated in all things as though he had been the heir; so much indulged and petted — well, talking pays no toll, or there is much I could say to you! To him, you are a usurper.”

Gervase finished his brandy, and set down the glass. “I see. It is melancholy indeed! Something tells me that I shall not be at Stanyon for very long.”

“What do you mean?” Theo said sharply.

Gervase looked at him, a little bewildered. “Why, what should I mean?”

“Martin is rash — his temper is uncontrollable, but he would not murder you, Gervase!”

“Murder me! Good God, I should hope he would not!” exclaimed the Earl, laughing. “No, no, I only meant that I think I should prefer to live at Maplefield, or Studham — ah, no! Studham was not entailed, was it? It belongs to Martin!”

“Yes, it belongs to Martin, along with the Jamaican property,” said Theo grimly. “And your stepmother has the London house and the Dower House for the term of her life!”

“I grudge her neither,” replied the Earl lightly.

“When I can bring you to pay a little heed to the way in which things are left, you may well grudge the pair of them a great deal of what they now stand possessed!” retorted Theo. “I have sometimes thought that my uncle had taken leave of his senses! You have me to thank for it that the estate is not cut up even more!”

“I think I have you to thank for more than you would have me guess,” St. Erth said, smiling across at him. “You have been a good friend to me, Theo, and I thank you for it.”

“Well, I have done what lay in my power to keep the property intact,” Theo said gruffly. “But I am determined you shall be made to attend to your affairs, and so I warn you!”

“What a fierce fellow you are, to be sure! But you wrong me, you know! I did read my father’s will, and I fancy I know pretty well how things stand.”

“Then I wonder that you will be so expensive, Gervase!” said Theo forthrightly. “The charges you have made upon the estate this past twelvemonth — !”

“Oh, won’t it bear them? I shall be obliged to marry an heiress!”

“I wish you will be serious! Things have not come to such a pass as that, but you will do well to be a little more careful. When I have shown you how matters stand, I hope you may be persuaded to take up your residence here. It will not do to leave Stanyon masterless, you know.”

“Stanyon has a very good master in you, I fancy.”

“Nonsense! I am nothing but your agent.”

“But I should find it a dead bore!” objected Gervase. “Only consider the dreadful evening I have spent already! I have not the remotest guess where Martin went to, but I am sure he was not to be blamed for his flight. I wish I had had the courage to follow his example! And who, pray, is that little squab of a female? Was she invited for my entertainment? Don’t tell me she is an heiress! I could not — no, I really could not be expected to pay my addresses to anyone with so little countenance or conversation!”

“Drusilla! No, no, nothing of, that sort!” smiled Theo. “I fancy my aunt thinks she would make a very suitable wife for me!”

“My poor Theo!”

“Oh, she is a very good sort of a girl, after all! But my tastes do not run in that direction. She is a guest at Stanyon merely while her parents are visiting in the north. They live at Gilbourne: in fact, they are your tenants. Her ladyship has a kindness for Drusilla, which is not wonderful, for she is always very obliging, and her lack of countenance, as you have it, makes it in the highest degree unlikely that she will ever be a danger to Lady St. Erth’s schemes for Martin.” He rose from his chair, and added, glancing down at the Earl: “We can offer you better entertainment, I hope! There is the hunting, remember, and your coverts should afford you excellent sport.”

“My dear Theo, I may have been abroad for a few years, but I was reared in England, you know!” expostulated Gervase. “If you will tell me what I am to hunt, or shoot, at this moment — !”

Theo laughed. “Wood-pigeons!”

“Yes, and rabbits. I thank you!”

“Well, you will go to London for the Season, I daresay.”

“You may say so with the fullest confidence.”

“I see it is useless for me to waste my eloquence upon you. Only remain at Stanyon for long enough to understand in what case you stand, and I must be satisfied! Tomorrow, I give you warning, I shall make you attend to business. I won’t tease you any more tonight, however. Sleep sound!”

“I hope I may, but I fear my surroundings may give me a nightmare. Where are you quartered, Theo?”

“Oh, in the Tower! It has come to be considered my particular domain. My bedchamber is above the muniment room, you know.”

“A day’s march to reach you! It must be devilish uncomfortable!”

“On the contrary, it suits me very well. I am able to fancy myself in a house of my own, and can enter the Tower by the door into the Chapel Court, if I choose, and so escape being commanded to furnish my aunt with the details of where I have been, or where I am going!”

“Good God! Will it be my fate to endure such examinations?”

“My aunt,” said Theo, with a lurking twinkle, “likes to know all that one does, and why one does it.”

“You terrify me! I shall certainly not remain at Stanyon above a week!”

But his cousin only smiled, and shook his head, and left him to ring for his valet.

When the man came, he brought with him a can of hot water, and a warming-pan. The Earl, staring at this, said: “Now, what in thunder are you about?”

“It appears, my lord,” responded Turvey, in a voice carefully devoid of expression, “that extremely early hours are kept in this house — or, as I apprehend I should say, Castle. The servants have already gone to bed, and your lordship would hardly desire to get between cold sheets.”

“Thank you, my constitution is really not so sickly as you must think it! Next you will bring me laudanum, as a composer! Set the thing down in the hearth, and don’t be so foolish again, if you please! Have they housed you comfortably?”

“I make no complaint, my lord. I collect that the Castle is of considerable antiquity.”

“Yes, parts of it date back to the fourteenth century,” said the Earl, stripping off his shirt. “It was moated once, but the lake is now all that remains of the moat.”

“That, my lord,” said Turvey, relieving him of his shirt, “would no doubt account for the prevailing atmosphere of damp.”

“Very likely!” retorted Gervase. “I infer that Stanyon does not meet with your approval!”

“I am sure, a most interesting pile, my lord. Possibly one becomes inured to the inconvenience of being obliged to pass through three galleries and seven doors on one’s way to your lordship’s room.”

“Oh!” said the Earl, a trifle disconcerted. “It would certainly be better that you should be quartered rather nearer to me.”

“I was alluding, my lord, to the position of the Servants’ Hall. To reach your lordship’s room from my own, it will be necessary for me to descend two separate stairways, to pass down three corridors; through a door permitting access to one of the galleries with which the Castle appears to be — if I may say so! — somewhat profusely provided; and, by way of an antechamber, or vestibule, reach the court round which this portion of the Castle was erected.” He waited for these measured words to sink into his master’s brain, and then added, in soothing accents: “Your lordship need have no fear, however, that I shall fail to bring your shaving-water in the morning. I have desired one of the under-footman — a very obliging lad — to act as my guide until I am rather more conversant with my surroundings.” He paused. “Or, perhaps I should say, until your lordship decides to return to London!”

Chapter 3

Neither the Dowager nor Miss Morville appeared at the breakfast-table next morning; and although a place was laid for the Chaplain, he had not emerged from his bedchamber when Gervase joined his brother and his cousin in the sunny parlour. His entrance disconcerted Martin, who was fairly embarked on a scathing condemnation of the clothing which he apparently considered suitable for country-wear. Since Gervase was impeccably attired in riding-breeches, top-boots, and a serviceable, if unusually well-cut, frockcoat, Martin’s scornful animadversions became, even in his own ears, singularly inapposite. Theo, who had listened to him in unencouraging silence, smiled slightly at sight of the Earl, and said to his younger cousin: “You were saying?”

“It don’t signify!” snapped Martin, glowering at him.

“Good-morning!” said Gervase. “Oh, don’t ring the bell, Theo! Abney knows I am here.”

“I trust no nightmares, Gervase?” Theo said quizzically.

“Not the least in the world. Do either of you know if my horses have yet arrived?”

“Yes, I understand they came in early this morning, your groom having stayed at Grantham overnight. An old soldier, is he?”

“Yes, an excellent fellow, from my own Troop,” replied Gervase, walking over to the side-table, and beginning to carve a large ham there.

“I say, Gervase, where did you come by that gray?” demanded Martin.

The Earl glanced over his shoulder. “In Ireland. Do you like him?”

“Prime bit of blood! I suppose you mean to take the shine out of us Melton men with him?”

“I haven’t hunted him yet. We shall see how he does. I brought him down to try his paces a little.”

“You won’t hack him during the summer!”

“No, I shan’t do that,” said the Earl gravely.

“My dear Martin, do you imagine that Gervase does not know a great deal more about horses than you?” said Theo.

“Oh, well, I daresay he may, but troopers are a different matter!”

That made Gervase laugh. “Very true! — as I know to my cost! But I have been more fortunate than many: I have only once been obliged to ride one.”

“When was that?” enquired Theo.

“At Orthes. I had three horses shot under me that day, and very inconvenient I found it.”

“You bear a charmed life, Gervase.”

“I do, don’t I?” agreed the Earl, seating himself at the table.

“Were you never even wounded?” asked Martin curiously.

“Nothing but a sabre-cut or two, and a graze from a spent ball. Tell me what cattle you have in the stables here!”

No question could have been put to Martin that would more instantly have made him sink his hostility. He plunged, without further encouragement, into a technical and detailed description of all the proper high-bred ‘uns, beautiful steppers, and gingers to be found in the Stanyon stables at that moment. Animation lightened the darkness of his eyes, and dispelled the sullen expression from about his mouth. The Earl, listening to him with a half-smile hovering on his lips, slipped in a leading question about the state of his coverts, and finished his breakfast to the accompaniment of an exposition of the advantages of close shot over one that scattered, the superiority of the guns supplied by Manton’s, and the superlative merits of percussion caps.

“To tell you the truth,” confessed Martin, “I am a good deal addicted to sport!”

The Earl preserved his countenance. “I perceive it. What do you find to do in the spring and the summer-time, Martin?”

“Oh, well! Of course, there is nothing much to do,” acknowledged Martin. “But one can always get a rabbit, or a brace of wood-pigeon!”

“If you can get a wood-pigeon, you are a good shot,” observed Gervase.

This remark could scarcely have failed to please. “Well, I can, and it is true, isn’t it, that a wood-pigeon is a testing shot?” said Martin. “My father would always pooh-pooh it, but Glossop says — you remember Glossop, the head-keeper? — that your pigeon will afford you as good sport as any game-bird of them all!”

The Earl agreed to it; and Martin continued to talk very happily of all his sporting experiences, until an unlucky remark of Theo’s put him in mind of his grievances, when he relapsed into a fit of monosyllabic sulks, which lasted for the rest of the meal.

“Really, Theo, that was not adroit!” said the Earl, afterwards.

“No: bacon-brained!” owned Theo ruefully. “But if we are to guard our tongues every minute of every day — I”

“Nonsense! The boy is merely spoilt. Is that my stepmother’s voice? I shall go down to the stables!”

Here he was received with much respect and curiosity, nearly every groom and stableboy finding an occasion to come into the yard, and to steal a look at him, where he stood chatting to the old coachman. On the whole, he was approved. He was plainly not a neck-or-nothing young blood of the Fancy, like his half-brother; he was a quiet gentleman, like his cousin, who was a very good rider to hounds; and if the team of lengthy, short-legged bits of blood-and-bone he had brought to Stanyon had been of his own choosing, he knew one end of a horse from another. He might take a rattling toss or two at the bullfinches of Ashby Pastures, but it seemed likely that he would turn out in prime style, and possible that he would prove himself to be a true cut of Leicestershire.

He found his head-groom, Sam Chard, late of the 7th Hussars, brushing the dried mud from the legs of his horse, Cloud. Chard straightened himself, and grinned at him, sketching a salute. “‘Morning, me lord!”

“You found your way here safely,” commented the Earl, passing a hand down Cloud’s neck.

“All right and tight, me lord. Racked up for the night at Grantham, according to orders.”

“No trouble here?”

“Not to say trouble, me lord, barring a bit of an escara-muza with the Honourable Martin’s man, him not seeming to understand his position, and passing a remark about redcoats, which I daresay he done by way of ignorance. Redcoats! The Saucy Seventh! But no bones broken, me lord, and I will say he didn’t display so bad.”

“Chard, I will have no fighting here!”

“ Fighting, me lord?” said his henchman, shocked. “Lor’, no. Nothing but a bit of cross-and-jostle work, with a muzzier to finish it! Everything very nice and abrigado now, me lord. You’re looking at that bay: a rum ‘un to look at, but I daresay he’s the devil to go. One of his Honourable Martin’s, and by what they tell me he’s a regular dash: quite the out-and-outer! Would he be a relation of your lordship’s?”

“My half-brother — and see that you are civil to him!”

“Civil as a nun’s hen, me lord!” Chard responded promptly. “They do think a lot of him here, seemingly.” He applied himself to one of the gray’s fore-legs. “Call him the young master.” He shot a look up at the Earl. “Very natural, I’m sure — the way things have been.” Before the Earl could speak, he continued cheerfully: “Now, that well-mixed roan, in the third stall, me lord, he belongs to Mr. Theo, which I understand is another of your lordship’s family. A niceish hack, ain’t he? And a very nice gentleman, too, according to what I hear. Yes, me lord, on the whole, and naming no exceptions, I think we can say that the natives are bien dispuesto! ”

The Earl thought it prudent to return an indifferent answer. It was apparent to him that his groom was already, after only a few hours spent at Stanyon, fully conversant with the state of affairs there. He reflected that Martin’s feelings must be bitter indeed to have communicated themselves to the servants; and it was in a mood of slight pensiveness that he strolled back to the Castle.

Here he was met by Miss Morville, who said, rather surprisingly, that she had been trying to find him.

“Indeed!” Gervase said, raising his brows. “May I know in what way I can serve you, Miss Morville?”

She coloured, for his tone was not cordial, but her disconcertingly candid gaze did not waver from his face. “I shouldn’t think you could serve me at all, sir,” she said. “ I am only desirous of serving Lady St. Erth, which, perhaps, I should have made plain to you at the outset, for I can see that you think I have been guilty of presumption!”

It was now his turn to redden. He said: “I assure you, ma’am, you are mistaken!”

“Well, I don’t suppose that I am, for I expect you are used to be toad-eaten, on account of your high rank,” replied Drusilla frankly. “I should have explained to you that I have no very great opinion of Earls.”

Rising nobly to the occasion, he replied with scarcely a moment’s hesitation: “Yes, I think you should have explained that! ”

“You see, I am the daughter of Hervey Morville,” disclosed Drusilla. She added, with all the air of one throwing in a doubler: “ And of Cordelia Consett!”

The Earl could think of nothing better to say than that he was a little acquainted with a Sir James Morville, who was a member of White’s Club.

“My uncle,” acknowledged Drusilla. “He is a very worthy man, but not, of course, the equal of my Papa!”

“Of course not!” agreed Gervase.

“I daresay,” said Drusilla kindly, “that, from the circumstance of your military occupation, you have not had the leisure to read any of Papa’s works, so I should tell you that he is a Philosophical Historian. He is at the moment engaged in writing a History of the French Revolution.”

“From a Republican point-of-view, I collect?”

“Yes, certainly, which makes it sometimes a great labour, for it would be foolish to suppose that his opinions have undergone no change since he first commenced author. That,” said Drusilla, “was before I was born.”

“Oh, yes?” said Gervase politely.

“In those days, you may say that he was as ardent a disciple of Priestley as poor Mr. Coleridge, whom he knew intimately when a very young man. In fact, Papa was a Pantisocrat.”

“A — ?”

She obligingly repeated it. “They were a society of whom the most prominent members were Mr. Coleridge, and Mr. Southey, and my Papa. They formed the intention of emigrating to the banks of the Susquehanna, but, fortunately, neither Mrs. Southey nor Mama considered the scheme practicable, so it was abandoned. I daresay you may have noticed that persons of large intellect have not the least common-sense. In this instance, it was intended that there should be no servants, but everyone should devote himself — or herself, as the case might be — for two hours each day to the performance of the necessary domestic duties, after which the rest of the day was to have been occupied in literary pursuits. But, of course, Mama and Mrs. Southey readily perceived that although the gentlemen might adhere to the two-hour-rule, it would be quite impossible for the ladies to do so. In fact, Mama was of the opinion that although the gentlemen might be induced, if strongly adjured, to draw water, and to chop the necessary wood, they would certainly have done no more. And no one,” continued Miss Morville, with considerable acumen, “could have placed the least reliance on their continued performance of such household tasks, for, you know, if they had been engaged in philosophical discussion they would have forgotten all about them.”

“I conclude,” said Gervase, a good deal amused, “that your Mama is of a practical disposition?”

“Oh, no!” replied Miss Morville serenely. “That is why she did not wish to form one of the colony. She has no turn for domestic duties:, Mama is an Authoress. She has written several novels, and numerous articles and treatises. She was used to be a friend of Mrs. Godwin’s — the first Mrs. Godwin, I should explain — and she holds views, which are thought to be very advanced, on Female Education.”

“And have you been reared according to these views?” enquired Gervase, in some misgiving.

“No, for Mama has been so fully occupied in prescribing for the education of females in general that naturally she has had little time to spare for her own children. Moreover, she is a person of excellent sense, and, mortifying though it has been to her, she has not hesitated to acknowledge that neither I nor my elder brother is in the least bookish.”

“A blow!” commented the Earl.

“Yes, but she has sustained it with fortitude, and we have great hopes that my younger brother, who is now at Cambridge, will become distinguished. And, after all, there must be someone in a household who does not dislike domestic management.”

“Is that your fate, Miss Morville?” the Earl asked, rather touched. “Is your life spent in these rural fastnesses, performing a housekeeper’s duties? I pity you!”

“Well, you need not,” returned Miss Morville unromantically. “We are only to be found in Lincolnshire when Papa requires quiet for the performance of his labours. In general, we reside in London, so that Mama may enjoy the benefits of literary society.”

“Forgive me, ma’am, if I say that it sounds to me like a dead bore!”

“Oh, yes, to those who are not bookish, it is!” agreed Miss Morville. “When in London, I spend much of my time in the company of my aunt, Lady Morville, and my cousins. Parties, and theatres, you know, for they are always very gay, and most good-natured in including me in their schemes. My aunt even undertook my Presentation last year, which, when you consider that she had three daughters of her own to bring out, you must allow was very handsome in her. Particularly when Mama had declared herself ready to sink her scruples, and to perform the duty herself. Neither Mama nor Papa approves of Royalty, of course. But neither, I assure you, is an advocate of the more violent forms of Jacobinism.”

“I am relieved. They would not, you think, wish to see such heads as mine fall under the knife of the guillotine?”

“I shouldn’t think they would wish to see any head do so.”

While they had been talking, they had mounted the Grand Stairway, crossed the hall at the head of it, and now entered the Long Drawing-room. The Earl enquired: “Where are you taking me, Miss Morville?”

“To the Small Dining-room, if you please. I wish you to inform me whether you approve of what I have done with the epergne, or whether you would prefer some other arrangement.”

“What you have done with it? Pray, why should you be called upon to do anything with it?”

“Well, I was not precisely called upon, but someone had to decide what was to be done, when all you would say was that it should be stowed away in a dark cupboard!” she pointed out. “Poor Abney was quite bewildered, you know, for he could not suppose that you meant it; and as for Lady St. Erth, she says that after what has passed nothing will prevail upon her to raise her voice in the matter.”

“I am delighted to hear it. A dark cupboard seems to be the only place for such a hideous object. Do not tell me that you admire it!”

“No, not at all, but I don’t consider myself a judge, and what I might think ugly other people, perhaps, would consider a very handsome piece.”

“Let me make it plain to you, Miss Morville, that I will not sit down to dinner with that thing in the middle of the table!”

“You could not, for now that the table has been reduced, which, I must say, was a very good notion, there is no room on it for the epergne. But now and again, I daresay, you will wish the table enlarged to accommodate more persons, and the epergne can be set upon it for the occasion. It is certainly very disagreeable to be obliged to crane one’s neck to see round it, when one dines informally, and it may be thought allowable to converse with persons seated on the opposite side of the table; but on more state occasions that would be a sadly ill-bred thing to do, and the epergne need be an annoyance to no one.”

“I hesitate to contradict you, ma’am, but it must always be an annoyance to me,” said Gervase.

“Not,” said Miss Morville, “if it were turned so that you were not confronted by a snarling tiger. When Abney brought me here this morning, to consider what was to be done, I instantly perceived that you had been obliged, throughout the meal, to look at this creature; and, naturally, I realized that the spectacle of a ferocious beast, in the act of springing upon its prey, could not be thought conducive to conviviality, and might, indeed, be offensive to a person of sensibility. But on the reverse side,” pursued Miss Morville, preceding the Earl into the Small Dining-room, “there are a group of natives gathered beneath a palm tree, two peacocks and an elephant, with trunk upraised. Quite unexceptionable, I think!” She halted inside the Dining-room, and indicated a Buhl table, placed in the window embrasure. “You see, I desired Abney to have that table from the Crimson Saloon carried into the room, and have caused the epergne to be set upon it; but if you do not like it, it can be moved.”

“A dark cupboard!” said the Earl obstinately.

“Recollect that you will be seated with your back turned to it!” begged Miss Morville.

“I should suppose the tiger to be leaping upon me.”

“Oh, no, indeed you could not, for it is facing the window!”

“Unanswerable! Pray, why are you so anxious to preserve the epergne, ma’am?”

“Well, I think Lady St. Erth might be a little mollified, if it were still in the room; and it would be quite improper, you know, to consign all your heirlooms, which you do not like, to dark cupboards,” said Miss Morville reasonably. “I daresay there are several changes you will wish to make at Stanyon, but it is a favourite saying of my brother Jack’s — my military brother — that one should always try to get over heavy ground as light as one can.”

He smiled. “Very true! In what regiment is your military brother?”

“A line regiment: I daresay you would not know,” said Miss Morville. “ You, I collect, were in the 7th Hussars — one of the crack cavalry regiments!”

The Earl, a little shaken, admitted it.

“The Lilywhite Seventh,” said Miss Morville indulgently, shepherding him out of the room. “ I know!”

“And the devil of it is,” said the Earl, twenty minutes later, to his cousin, “that I have let that wretched chit talk me into permitting the continued existence of that abominable epergne in my dining-room!”

Chapter 4

The Earl spent the rest of the morning in the muniment room, docilely permitting his cousin to explain the management of his estates to him, and to point out to him the various provisions of his father’s will. Besides the very considerable property which had been left to Martin, personal bequests were few, and included no more than a modest legacy to the nephew whose diligence and business ability had made it possible for him to spend the last years of his life in luxurious indolence.

Theodore Frant was the only offspring of the late Earl’s younger brother, who, in the opinion of his family, had crowned a series of youthful indiscretions by marrying a penniless female of birth considerably inferior to his own. His tastes had been expensive, and a passion for gaming had made him swiftly run through his patrimony. His wife survived the birth of her child only by a few weeks; her place was filled by a succession of ladies, ranging from an opera-dancer to a fruit-woman, according to the fluctuating state of his finances; and the Earl, upon the only occasion when he was constrained to visit his disreputable relative, finding his youthful nephew engaged in bearing a quartern of gin upstairs to the reigning mistress of the establishment, acted upon the impulse of the moment, and bore the sturdy boy off with him, to be reared with his own two sons at Stanyon. His brother, though he had hoped for more tangible relief, raised no objection, reflecting that in moments of acute stress the Earl’s purse must always be untied for him, his lordship having the greatest objection to allowing any scandal to be attached to his name. Happily for the Earl’s peace of mind, an inflammation of the lungs, contracted during a wet week at Newmarket, carried the Honourable John off three years later.

It was not to be expected that the second Lady St. Erth would immediately greet with approbation the inclusion into her home of the son of so unsteady a man; but even she was soon brought to acknowledge that Theo inherited none of his father’s instability. He was a stolid, even-tempered boy, and he grew into a taciturn but dependable young man. The Earl, who sent his own sons to Eton, in the tradition of his family, caused Then to be educated at Winchester. He did not, like his cousins, go to Oxford, but instead, and by his own choice, applied himself to the task of learning the business of his uncle’s agent. So apt a pupil did he prove to be, that when the older man resigned he was able and ready to succeed him. In a very short space of time he was managing the Earl’s estates better than they had been managed for many years, for he was not only capable and energetic, but his subordinates liked him, and he was devoted to the Frant interests. His uncle relinquished more and more of his affairs into his hands, until it became generally understood that Mr. Theo must be applied to for whatever was needed.

Gervase, knowing this, had expected his father to have left him more handsomely provided for. He said as much, looking at his cousin in a little trouble, but Theo only smiled and said: “You may be thankful he did not! I had no expectation of it.”

“He might have left you an estate, I think.”

“Studham, perhaps?”

“Well, I had as lief you had it as Martin,” said Gervase frankly. “I was really thinking of the property he bought towards Crowland, however. What’s the name of the manor? — Evesleigh, is it not? Shall I make it over to you?”

“You shall not! There has been enough cutting-up of the estate already.”

“But, Theo, you cannot spend all your life managing my property!”

“Very likely I shall not. I have a very saving disposition, you know, and you pay me a handsome wage, besides housing me in the first style of elegance, so that I am not put to the expense of maintaining an establishment of my own!”

Gervase laughed, but shook his head. “You cannot like it!”

“I like it very well indeed, thank you. Stanyon has been as much my home as yours, recollect!”

“Much more,” said the Earl.

“Yes, unfortunately, but you will forget the past. Do you mean to allow Martin to continue here?”

“I had not considered the matter. Does he wish to?”

“Well, it will certainly not suit him to remove to Studham!” replied Theo. “I do not know how he is to continue hunting with the Belvoir from Norfolk! He would be obliged to put up at Grantham throughout the winter, and I own it would be uncomfortable. There is, moreover, this to be considered: when Cinderford died, your father permitted our aunt to take up her residence there, and it would be hard, I daresay, to prevail upon her to remove.”

“Impossible, I imagine. He may remain at Stanyon, if only he can be persuaded to treat me with the semblance at least of civility. There appears, at the moment, to be little likelihood, however, of his doing so.”

But when the Earl presently joined the rest of his family in one of the parlours on the entrance floor, where a light luncheon had been set out on the table, he found the Dowager and her son apparently determined to be amiable. That he had been the subject of their conversation was made manifest by the conscious silence which fell upon them at his entrance. The Dowager, recovering first from this, said with the utmost graciousness that she was glad to see him, and invited him to partake of some cold meat, and a peach from his own succession-houses. These, which had been installed at her instigation, were, she told him, amongst the finest in the country, and could be depended on to produce the best grapes, peaches, nectarines, and pines which could anywhere be found.

“The gardens, of course, cannot be said to be at their best thus early in the year,” she observed, “but when you have had time to look about you, I trust you will be pleased with their arrangement. I spared no pains, for I dote upon flowers, and I fancy something not altogether contemptible has been achieved. Indeed, the Duchess of Rutland, a very agreeable woman, has often envied me my show of choice blooms. Martin, pass the mustard to your brother: you must perceive that it is beyond his reach!”

This command having been obeyed, she resumed, in the complacent tone habitual to her: “Unless you should prefer to speak with Calne yourself, St. Erth, which I cannot suppose to be very likely (for gentlemen seldom interest themselves in such matters), I shall request him to devise one or two elegant bowls for the State saloons. It is not to be supposed that people will care to be backward in paying their morning-calls, now that it is known that you are in residence; and very few families, you know, have as yet removed to the Metropolis. We must not be found unprepared, and, I do not by any means despair of Calne’s achieving something creditable.”

“Am I to understand, ma’am, that I must expect to receive visits from all my neighbours?” asked Gervase, in some dismay.

“Certainly!” said the Dowager, ignoring a muffled crack of laughter from her son. “It would be very odd in them not to render you the observances of civility. It will be proper for you to hold a few dinner-parties, and now that I have put off black gloves I shall not object to performing my duties as hostess. Stanyon has ever held a reputation for hospitality, and I fancy that my little parties have not been, in the past, wholly despised. I am sure nothing is further from my thoughts than a disposition to meddle, but I would advise you, my dear St. Erth, to allow yourself to be guided in these matters by me. You cannot be expected to know who should be honoured by an invitation to dine with you, and who may be safely fobbed off with a rout-party, or even a Public Day.”

“A Public Day!” repeated Gervase. “You terrify me, ma’am! What must I do upon such an occasion?”

“Oh, you have merely to move about amongst the company — your tenants, you know! — saying something amiable to everyone!” said Martin. “The most tedious affair! I have always contrived to be a couple of miles distant!”

“What admirable good sense! Pray, into which class may Miss Morville, and her peculiar parents, fall, ma’am?”

“That,” responded the Dowager, “is a question that has frequently exercised my mind. There can be no denying that the Morvilles — they are able, you know, to trace their lineage back to the time of the Norman Conquest — must be thought to rank amongst those of the best blood in the country; but there can be no denying that the opinions held by Mr. Hervey Morville — and, I feel compelled to say, by his lady, though she too is of excellent birth, so that one is quite in a puzzle to determine what circumstances can have prevailed upon her to turn to the pen — that these opinions, as I have observed, must cause the most liberally-minded person to hesitate before including him in any select invitation. A shocking thing for his family, you know! He was actually acquainted with Home Tooke! However, the late Earl was used to say that he had a well-informed mind, and we have been used to invite him, and his lady, to dine with us from time to time. His daughter is quite a favourite with me; a delightful girl!”

At this point, the eyes of the half-brothers met. The Earl was able to command his features, but Martin choked over a mouthful of cold beef. The Dowager said indulgently: “I do not assert that she is beautiful, but she is a very pretty-behaved young female, and one that will do very well for poor Theo. I have a great regard for Theo, and I should be happy to see him comfortably established.”

“Where,” asked Gervase, with only the slightest tremor in his voice, “is Miss Morville now? She does not care for a nuncheon?”

“The dear child has walked through the Park to Gilbourne House,” answered the Dowager. “A letter from her Mama desired her to forward some small matters to Gretta Hall, for she and Mr. Morville, you must know, are spending a few days as the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Southey — the Laureate, I need scarcely remind you. I believe he and Mr. Morville were once intimate, but Mr. Southey, one is thankful to say, has long since abandoned those Revolutionary tendencies which must, previously, have rendered him quite ineligible for the distinguished position which he now adorns. The Curse of Kebama! His Life of Nelson! I am no great reader myself, but I am sure I must have heard the late lord speak favourably of these works I daresay a dozen times!”

“We must certainly invite him to dinner,” murmured Gervase.

“I believe it will be proper for us to do so,” acknowledged the Dowager. “His brother, Sir James Morville, is a distinguished man; and they are related, one must remember, to the Minchinhamptons. We must wait, however, to see whether a suitable party may be arranged, though, to be sure, I have no doubt that we might, if we chose, arrange a dozen such! I should not think it marvellous if we were to receive as many as fifty visits from our neighbours this sennight.”

“I sincerely trust you may be wrong, ma’am!” said Gervase.

The next few days, however, showed that the Dowager had not misjudged the civility, or the curiosity, of the neighbouring gentry. Chaises, barouches, curricles, and even, when old Lady Wintringham decided that it behoved her to leave cards upon the new Earl, an antiquated coach bowled up the avenue to the imposing front-doors of Stanyon, and set down passengers dressed in all the finery of silk and velvet, or the natty elegance of yellow pantaloons and best Bath suiting. The Earl found most of his visitors as tedious as they were well-disposed; and, after enduring three consecutive days of almost continuous civilities, the sight of a carriage drawing up under his window was enough to send him stealthily down one of the secondary staircases to a vestibule whence it was possible for him to escape from the Castle, into the Fountain Court. From here it was an easy matter for him to reach the stables without being intercepted by an over-zealous servant; and while the Dowager entertained the morning-guests with one of her powerful monologues, her undutiful stepson was enjoying a gallop on the back of his gray horse, Cloud, having speedily put several miles between himself and the Castle.

He had already, once or twice, ridden out with his cousin, and the bailiff, but his way led him on this occasion in a direction hitherto unvisited by him. It was a fine day towards the close of March, the ground rather heavy from recent rains, but fast drying under a strong wind, blowing from the east. The hedgerows were bursting into new leaf, and the banks were starred with primroses. The Earl, having, as he would have said, galloped the fidgets out of Cloud, was hacking gently down a narrow lane when he came, round a bend, upon an unexpected sight. A lady was seated on the bank, engaged in gathering primroses from a clump within her reach. This in itself, however imprudent in such damp and blustery weather, would not have attracted more than the Earl’s fleeting attention had he not perceived that the lady was attired in a riding-habit. Here, plainly, was an equestrienne in distress. He brought Cloud trotting up and caused him to halt alongside her.

The lady had lifted her head at the first sound of Cloud’s hooves, and Gervase, raising his beaver, found himself looking down into a charming, wilful countenance, framed by the sweep of a hat-brim, and a cascade of pale, wind-tossed ringlets. A pair of large blue eyes, lighter and merrier than his own, met his with a rueful twinkle; a roguish dimple hovered at the corner of a kissable mouth striving unavailingly to preserve its gravity.

“I beg your pardon!” Gervase said, his gaze riveted on the fair face upturned to his. “Can I be of assistance, ma’am? Some accident, I apprehend! Your horse — ?”

He dismounted, as he spoke, and pulled the bridle over Cloud’s head. The fair Diana broke into a ripple of laughter. “Depend upon it, the horrid creature is by now standing snugly in her stall! Was ever anything so vexatious? Papa will so roast me for parting company at such a paltry fence! Only the mare pecked, you know, and over her head I went, and perhaps I was foolish, or perhaps I was stunned — shall I declare that I was stunned? — and I released the bridle. You would have thought, after all the carrots and the sugar I have bestowed on her, that Fairy would have come to me when I coaxed her! But no! Off she set, thinking of nothing but her comfortable stable, I daresay!”

“Ungrateful indeed!” Gervase said, laughing. “But you must not sit upon that bank, ma’am, perhaps catching your death of cold! Is your home far distant?”

“No, oh, no! But to be walking through the village in my muddied habit, advertising my folly to the countryside — ! You will allow it to be unthinkable, my lord!”

“You know me, then, ma’am? But we have not previously met, I think — I am sure! I could not have forgotten!”

“Oh, no! But a stranger in this desert: one dressed, moreover, in the first style of elegance! I could be in no doubt. You are — you must be — Lord St. Erth!”

“I am St. Erth. And you, ma’am? How comes it about that this is our first encounter?”

She replied, with the most enchanting primming of her face, wholly belied by the mischievous look in her eyes: “Why, you must understand that one would not wish to appear pushing,by too early a visit, nor uncivil,by too late a one! Mama has formed the intention that Papa shall pay a morning-call at Stanyon next week!”

He was very much amused, and said: “I could not receive that morning-call too early, I assure you! It will be quite unnecessary, however, for Papa to be put to the trouble of a formal visit, for I shall forestall him. If I were to lift you on to Cloud’s back, ma’am, will you permit me to lead him to your home?”

She jumped down from the bank, catching up the skirt of her voluminous habit, and casting it over her arm. “Oh, yes! Will you do that? I shall be so very much obliged to you!”

On her feet, she was seen to be a slim creature, not above the average height, but exquisitely proportioned. Her movements, though impetuous, were graceful, and the Earl was permitted a glimpse of a neatly-turned ankle. She tucked her primroses into the buttonhole of her coat, where, mingling with her curls, they seemed almost exactly to blend with them. The Earl lifted her on to the saddle; she contrived to arrange one leg over the pommel, and declared herself to be perfectly safely established.

“Now, where am I to take you?” asked Gervase, smiling up at her.

“To Whissenhurst Grange, if you please! It is only a mile from where we stand, so you will not be obliged to trudge so very far!”

“I should be glad if it were twice as far. But did you mean to sit upon that bank for ever, ma’am?”

“Oh, they would have found me in a little while!” she said airily. “When Fairy reached the stables, you know, they would be thrown into such a pucker! I daresay everyone may already be searching the countryside for me.”

She spoke with all the unconcern of a spoiled child; and it was easy for him to guess that she must be the pet of her father’s establishment. With some shrewdness he asked her if her parents were aware of her riding out without a groom, and glanced quizzically up in time to see her pouting prettily.

“Oh, well, there can be no objection, after all, in the country! In town, of course, I could not do so. If only I had not jumped that wretched little hedge! Nothing was ever so mortifying! Indeed, I am not in the habit of tumbling off my horse, Lord St. Erth!”

“Why, the best of riders must take a toss or two!” he reassured her. “It was used to be said of the Master of the Quorn, when I was living at Stanyon previously, that he would have as many as fifty falls in a season!”

“Ah, you are talking of Mr. Assheton Smith, I collect! His name, you must know, is for ever on the tongues of the Melton men! You must have heard your brother deplore his leaving Quorndon Hall, I daresay! This has been his last season with the Quorn: he is coming into Lincolnshire, to hunt the Burton, and that will put him many miles beyond poor Martin’s reach!”

“I have indeed heard of it from Martin,” said Gervase, with a droll look. “Not all his calculations and his measurements will bring Reepham closer to Stanyon than fifty miles. He sees nothing for it but to put up at Market Rasen, if he should wish for a day with the Burton.”

“Martin is one of Mr. Smith’s upholders. A great many of the sporting gentlemen, however, complain that he draws his coverts too quickly, and will not lift as often as he should in Leicestershire.”

“You hunt yourself, ma’am?”

She threw him one of her roguish looks. “Yes, when hounds meet in the vicinity, and I will faithfully promise to do just as Papa bids me!”

“I hope you keep your promises!”

“Yes, yes, in general I am very good!”

“You will think me abominably stupid, I fear, but I think I can never have met your Papa, and thus do not know what I shall call him when we meet.”

“Papa is Sir Thomas Bolderwood,” she replied at once. “Very likely you might not have encountered him, for we came to live at Whissenhurst only a few years ago, and you have all the time been abroad.”

“I must be grateful to whatever lucky chance it was that brought Sir Thomas into Lincolnshire,” said Gervase.

She received this with a laugh, and a little shake of her head. She was young enough to feel embarrassment at broad compliments, but she betrayed none: plainly, she was accustomed to being very much admired, although the coming London Season, as she presently confided to the Earl, was to be her first. “For one does not count private parties, and although I was almost seventeen last spring, Mama could not be prevailed upon to present me, though even my Aunt Caroline, who is so strict and stuffy, counselled her most strongly to do so. However, this year I am to be presented, and I shall go to Almack’s, and the Opera, and everywhere! ”

The Earl, concluding from this artless prattle that Miss Bolderwood moved in unexceptionable circles, began to wonder why no mention of her family had been made to him by his stepmother. In all her consequential enumerations of the persons likely to leave their cards at Stanyon he could not recall ever to have heard her utter the name of Bolderwood. But as he led Cloud into the village through which they were obliged to pass on their way to Whissenhurst Grange, an inkling of the cause of this omission was conveyed to him by an unexpected encounter with his half-brother.

Martin, who was hacking towards them in the company of a young gentleman who sported a striped waistcoat, and a Belcher tie, no sooner perceived who was the fair burden upon Cloud’s back than he spurred up, an expression on his brow both of astonishment and anger. “Marianne!” he exclaimed. “What’s this? How comes this about? What in thunder are you doing on St. Erth’s horse?”

“Why, that odious Fairy of mine, having thrown me into the mire, would not allow me to catch her!” responded Marianne merrily. “Had it not been for Lord St. Erth’s chivalry I must still be seated miserably by the wayside, or perhaps plodding along this very dirty road!”

“I wish I had been there!” Martin said.

“I wish I had been there!” gallantly echoed his companion.

“I am very glad you were not, for to be seen tumbling off my horse could not at all add to my consequence! Oh, Lord St. Erth, are you acquainted with Mr. Warboys?”

Martin, interrupting the exchange of civilities between his friend and his brother, said: “You might have been killed! I do not know what Lady Bolderwood will say! You must let me escort you home!” He seemed to become aware of the fatuity of this utterance, and added awkwardly, and with a rising colour: “You will wish to be going on your way, St. Erth!”

“I am going on my way,” replied the Earl, who was looking amused. “I must tell you, Martin, that I find you very much de trop! ”

“By Jove, yes!” agreed Mr. Warboys, with even more gallant intention. “Anyone would! Would myself!” He encountered a fiery glance from Martin, which flustered him, and added hastily: “That is to say — what I meant was, that’s a devilish good-looking hunter you have there, St. Erth! Great rump and hocks! Splendid shoulders! Not an inch above fifteen-three, I’ll swear! The very thing for this country!”

“Oh, he is the loveliest creature!” Marianne said, patting Cloud’s neck. “He makes no objection to carrying me in this absurd fashion: I am sure he must be the best-mannered horse in the world!”

“My Troubadour would carry you as well!” Martin muttered.

Mr. Warboys was moved to contradict this statement. “No, he wouldn’t. Wouldn’t carry her as well as my Old Soldier! Got a tricky temper, that tit of yours.”

“He is better-paced than that screw of yours! ”retorted Martin, firing up in defence of his horse.

“Old Soldier,” said Mr. Warboys obstinately, “would give her a comfortable ride.”

“You must be besotted to think so!”

“No, I ain’t. Old Soldier has often carried m’sister. Your Troubadour has never had a female on his back.”

“That can soon be mended!”

“I wonder,” said the Earl diffidently, “if you would think it rude in us to be proceeding on our way while you thrash the matter out between you? Miss Bolderwood will be in danger of contracting a chill, I fear.”

Martin cast him a smouldering look, but Mr. Warboys at once responded: “By Jupiter, so she will! Nasty wind blowing! No sense in standing about — silly thing to do!”

“I’ll accompany you!” Martin said, wheeling his horse about.

“Yes, pray do!” said Marianne, thoroughly enjoying this rivalry for her favours. “Papa and Mama will be so glad to see you! And you too, Mr. Warboys!”

“If I and not St. Erth had found you,” said Martin, “we would soon have seen whether Troubadour would have carried you or not!”

“Well, since the matter appears to trouble you, why should you not at once put it to the test?” suggested Gervase. “You will not object to changing horses, Miss Bolderwood? I very much fear that nothing less will satisfy poor Martin.”

Martin looked to be at once surprised and scornful. He had no great opinion of his brother’s mettle, but he had not expected him to relinquish his advantage so very tamely. He smiled triumphantly, and dismounted, but not in time to forestall Gervase in lifting Marianne down from Cloud’s back. She was installed on Troubadour’s saddle; the Earl swung himself on to Cloud again; and Martin, preparing to lead his horse along the street, realized too late that between the horseman and the pedestrian the advantage lay with the former. The Earl, riding easily beside the lady, was able to engage her in conversation, while his brother, plodding along at Troubadour’s head, was obliged, whenever he wished to claim her attention, to turn his head to look up at her, and to repeat his remark several times. The playful nature of her exchanges with Gervase considerably exacerbated his temper; nor was he mollified to observe that the Earl’s gallantry seemed to be very much to Marianne’s taste. After one or two unsuccessful attempts to draw her into conversation with himself, he relapsed into sulky silence; and was very nearly provoked, at journey’s end, into giving his friend, Mr. Warboys, a leveller. Mr. Warboys, a mournful witness of his discomfiture, was ill-advised enough to say to him, as Marianne led the Earl up the steps to the door of Whissenhurst Grange: “Rolled-up, dear boy! Very shabby stratagem! Fellow must have been on the Staff, I should think!”

Marianne’s safe arrival was greeted by her mother, her father, the butler, the housekeeper, and her old nurse with the most profound thanksgiving. The news of Fairy’s riderless return to the stables had only just been brought up to the house, so that there was time yet to send one of the footmen running to stop the grooms and the stableboys setting forth to scour the countryside in search of her. Sir Thomas, who had been shouting for his horse, pulling on his boots, and issuing instructions, all in one breath, was only induced to cease shaking and hugging his daughter by the necessity of thanking her preserver. His wife, though very much more restrained in her expressions, was equally obliged to the Earl; and it was hard to imagine how either of them could have been more grateful to him had he rescued Marianne from some deadly peril. As for Marianne, she laughed, and coaxed, and begged pardon, and was very soon forgiven her imprudence. Her Mama bore her upstairs to put off her muddied habit; Sir Thomas shouted for refreshment to be brought to the saloon, whither he led the Earl; and Martin, fairly gnashing his teeth, said stiffly that he would take his leave, now that he had seen Marianne restored to her parents.

“Yes, yes, there is no occasion for you to kick your heels, my boy!” said Sir Thomas genially. “To be sure, we are always glad to see you at Whissenhurst, and you too, Barny, but you will be wanting to go about your business now! This way, my lord! To think I had been meaning to wait on you next week, and here you are, making it quite unnecessary for me to do so! I am glad of it: I am no hand at doing the punctilio, you know!”

Thus dismissed, Martin bowed grandly, and left the house, closely followed by Mr. Warboys, who said helpfully, as they mounted their hacks: “No sense in getting into a miff, dear boy! Come about again presently, I daresay! Very unlucky chance your brother should have been riding in this direction, but not a bit of good staying there to outface him! Corkbrained thing to do! The devil of it is he’s a dashed handsome fellow. Good address too, besides the title.”

“If he thinks I will permit him to trifle with Marianne — !” said Martin, between his teeth.

“No reason to think he means to do so,” said Mr. Warboys soothingly. “Seemed very taken with her!”

Martin turned his head sharply to look at him, .so menacing an expression in his dark eyes that he was thrown into disorder. “What do you mean?”

“Well, now you come to ask me,” said Mr. Warboys, with the air of one making a discovery, “I don’t know what I mean! Spoke without thinking! Often do! Runs in the family: uncle of mine was just the same. Found himself married to a female with a squint all through speaking without thinking.”

“Oh, to hell with your uncle!” Martin said angrily.

“No use saying that, dear boy. The old gentleman took a pious turn years back. Won’t go to hell — not a chance of it! Aunt might — never met such a queer-tempered woman in my life!”

“ Will you stop boring on and on about your relatives?” said Martin savagely.

“Don’t mind doing that: no pleasure to me to talk about them! But if you think you’re going to have a turn-up with me, old fellow, you’re devilish mistaken!”

“Saphead! Why should I?”

“There ain’t any reason, but whenever you take one of your pets,” said Mr. Warboys frankly, “it don’t seem to signify to you whose cork you draw! All I say is, it ain’t going to be mine!”

Meanwhile, Sir Thomas, having ushered the Earl into one of his saloons and furnished him with a comfortable chair, and a glass of Madeira, had arrived at a more precise understanding of the service which had been rendered to his daughter. He chuckled a good deal over it, rubbing his hands together, and ejaculating: “Cow-handed little puss! I shall roast her finely for this, I can tell you! All’s well that ends well — though I’ll wager her Mama will have something to say to her giving her groom the slip! But there! she is our only chick, my lord, and we don’t care to be too strict, and that’s the truth! Yes, the Almighty never saw fit to give us another, and though I shan’t deny we did wish for a son — for there will be no one to inherit the baronetcy when I’m gone, you know — it was not to be, and, damme, we wouldn’t exchange our naughty puss for all the sons in creation!”

Gervase said what was proper, and sipped his wine, watching Sir Thomas, as he bustled about, casting another log on to the fire, altering the position of a screen to exclude a possible draught, tugging at the bell-rope to summon a servant to bring in the ratafia-wine for Miss Marianne. He was a stout little man, with a shrewd pair of eyes set in a round face whose original ruddy complexion had been much impaired by a tropical climate. He was dressed without much pretension to fashion in a blue coat and buckskin breeches, but he wore a large ruby-pin in his neckcloth, and another set in a ring upon his finger, so that he was clearly a person of affluence, if not of taste. The Earl was at a loss to decide from what order of society he had sprung, for although the cast of his countenance was aristocratic, with its aquiline nose, and finely-moulded lips, and his voice that of a well-bred man, his manners lacked polish, and he had a rough, colloquial way of expressing himself. His wife, on the other hand, had the appearance and the manners of a gentlewoman, and the style in which his house had been furnished was as elegant as it was expensive. That he had at some period during his lifetime visited the East was indicated by various specimens of oriental art which were scattered about the room. He saw the Earl glancing at the ornaments on the mantelshelf, and said: “Ay, you are looking at my ivories, my lord. I bought them for the most part in Calcutta, and a pretty sum they cost me, I can tell you! You won’t find any finer, for although I don’t know much about art, I won’t buy trumpery, and I’m a hard man to cheat.”

“You have resided in India, sir?”

“Spent the better part of my life there,” replied Sir Thomas briskly. “If you hear anyone speak of the Nabob, that’s me, or, at any rate, it’s what they call me here at home, and I won’t deny it’s true enough, though I could name you a good few men who made bigger fortunes in India than ever I did. Still, I’m reckoned to be a warm man, as they say. Queer world, ain’t it? I often wonder what my poor father would think if he had lived to see the Prodigal Son come home only just in time to save the family from landing in the basket! Ay, I was a wild young fellow, I can tell you, and caused my father a deal of trouble, God forgive me! The end of it was I was shipped off to India, and I daresay they all hoped I should be heard of no more. I don’t say I blame them, but it was a desperate thing to do, wasn’t it? I wouldn’t serve a son of mine so, but it all turned out for the best; and when I came home, with a snug fortune, and my girl just six years old, and as pretty as a picture, the tables were turned indeed! For what should I find but that brother of mine that was always used to have been as prim and as tonnish as the starchiest nob of them all regularly under the hatches! The silly fellow had been speculating, and he hadn’t the least head for it. A bubble-merchant, that’s what I called him! I found him as near to swallowing a spider as makes no matter, and what he found to squander his money on, with never a chick nor a child to call his own, is more than I can tell you. I daresay it was my lady who spent it, for it was always my lady who must have this, and my lady who was used to have that, till I told him to his head his lady might go hang for all of me! For ever prating about her grand family, she was, but she came to the wrong shop, for I married a girl who was better-born than she, and never any fine-lady nonsense about her, bless her! Well, the long and the short of it was that poor George was never so glad to see anyone in his life as he was to see me, for he actually had an execution in the house! And the worst set of Jeremy Didders hanging round him — well, well, I soon sent them packing, you may be sure! The joke of it was that George wasn’t pleased above half, because he had been always in the way of thinking himself much above my touch! Ah, well, he’s dead now, poor fellow, and I should not be laughing at him! Ay, he died a matter of six years ago, leaving no one but me to succeed him. He felt it, and so, I warrant you, does Caroline, though between you and me that don’t by any means stop her expecting me to drop my blunt into her purse every now and then!” He laughed heartily at this reflection, and his guest, considerably taken aback by these revelations, and scarcely knowing what to say in reply to them, was thankful when the door opened just then to admit the two ladies.

Marianne, who had changed her habit for a dress of sprigged muslin, tied with blue ribbons, was looking lovelier than ever; and the Earl found that he had not been mistaken in his first reading of Lady Bolderwood’s character. A fair, slender woman of considerable beauty, she was affable without being effusive. Without assuming any airs of consequence, or seeming to deprecate her husband’s free manners, she had a quiet dignity of her own, and talked very much like a sensible woman. While Sir Thomas boisterously rallied his daughter on her lack of horsemanship, she sat down beside the Earl, and conversed amiably with him. He decided that he liked both her and Sir Thomas. He was made to feel at home, and although both, in their several degrees, were grateful to him for the service he had rendered Marianne, neither showed the least disposition to toad-eat him. As for Marianne, he could not suppose that a lovelier or a sunnier-tempered girl existed. She bore all her father’s roasting with laughter, and coaxing pleas to be forgiven for having caused him anxiety; and when she saw that he had finished his wine, she jumped up to set down his glass for him.

“I hope that now we have been so unceremoniously introduced, you will visit us again, Lord St. Erth. We do not pretend to entertain in any formal style while we are in the country, for Marianne cannot be considered to be out, you know, until we remove to London next month; but if you don’t disdain a game of lottery-tickets, or to stand up to dance in a room with only perhaps half a dozen couples, I shall be very happy to welcome you whenever you should care to come.”

“That’s right!” said Sir Thomas, overhearing. “No state or flummery! We reserve all that for Grosvenor Square. If I had my way — but, there! this little puss of mine is determined to drag me to all manner of routs and soirees and balls, aren’t you, my pretty?”

She was seated on the arm of his chair, and at once bent to lay her cheek against his, and to say caressingly: “Dear Papa! Now, confess! You would not forgo any of it for the world!”

“Ay, I know you! You are a rogue, miss, and think you may twist me round your finger! Come and eat your mutton at Whissenhurst when you feel so inclined, my lord! You know your way, and if you did not, young Martin would show it to you fast enough. No offense, but I’ve a pretty good notion of the way things are at Stanyon, and although I’m sure her ladyship is a very good sort of a woman, I’ll go bail you are yawning till your jaws crack six days out of the seven!”

The Earl laughed, thanked him, and rose to take his leave. As he shook hands with Marianne, she smiled up at him in her innocent way, and said: “Do come again! We sometimes have the merriest parties — everyone comes to them!”

“I shall most certainly come,” Gervase said. “And you, I hope — ” his glance embraced them all — “will honour Stanyon with a visit. My stepmother is planning one or two entertainments: I believe you must shortly be receiving cards from her.”

“Oh, famous!” Marianne cried, clapping her hands. “Will you give a ball at Stanyon? Do say you will! It is the very place for one!”

“Miss Bolderwood has only to give her commands! A ball it shall be!”

“My love, it is time and more that you ceased to be such a sad romp!” said Lady Bolderwood, with a reproving look. “Pray do not heed her, Lord St. Erth!”

She gave him her hand, charged him to deliver her compliments to the Dowager, and Sir Thomas escorted him to the front-door, and stayed chatting to him on the steps, while his horse was brought round from the stables.

“There is no need for you to be giving a ball unless you choose,” he said bluntly. “Puss will have enough of them in another month, and I daresay her Mama don’t care for her to appear at any bang-up affair until after our own ball in Grosvenor Square. We’ll send you a card. But come and visit us in a friendly way when you choose! I like to see young people round me, enjoying themselves, and I remember my old Indian ways enough still to be glad to keep open house.” He chuckled. “No fear of our being dull in the country! If there’s any young spark for twenty-five miles round us whom you won’t find at Whissenhurst, one day or another, I wish I may meet him! But what I say to Mama is, there’s safety in numbers, and I can tell you this, my lord, we ain’t anxious to see our girl married too young! Sometimes I wonder what will become of us, when she sets up her own establishment! There were plenty of people to advise us to bring her out last Season, but, No, we said: there’s time and to spare! Hallo! is this your horse! Now, horseflesh is something I flatter myself I do understand! Ay, grand hocks! forelegs well before him! You’ll hear men praising cocktails, but what I say is, the best is always the best, and give me a thoroughbred every time!”

Chapter 5

It was some time before Martin returned to Stanyon, his friend having persuaded him, with the best intentions possible, to accompany him to his parental home. Mr. Warboys, inured by custom to Martin’s tantrums, formed the praiseworthy scheme of allowing that young gentleman’s wrath time to cool before he again encountered his half-brother. In itself, the scheme was excellent, but it was rendered abortive first by the encomiums bestowed by Mrs. Warboys, a fat and very nearly witless lady of forty summers, on the very pronounced degree of good-looks enjoyed by the Earl; and second by a less enthusiastic but by far more caustic remark uttered by Mr. Warboys, senior, to the effect that Martin, his own son, and almost every other young aspirant to the Beauty’s favours could be thought to stand no chance at all against a belted Earl.

“Unless Bolderwood is a bigger fool than I take him for,” he said, “he will lose no time in securing St. Erth for that chit of his!”

Shocked by such a display of tactlessness on the part of his progenitors, Mr. Warboys, junior, said: “Shouldn’t think St. Erth has any serious intentions, myself!”

It was perhaps not surprising that the cumulative effect of these remarks should have sent Martin Frant back to Stanyon in a mood of smouldering anger.

Although he could not have been said to have received any particular encouragement from Sir Thomas, or from Lady Bolderwood, he was generally acknowledged to have been, before the arrival of his half-brother at Stanyon, the most likely candidate for Marianne’s hand. He had first known her when she was a schoolroom miss, and he a freshman at Oxford, his thoughts far removed from matrimony. Long before he had thought more about her than that she was a very good sort of a girl, pluck to the backbone, even if lacking in judgment, he had captured her maiden fancy. He was a handsome young man, whose magnificent background lent his careless, imperious ways a romantic aura. He was a stylish cricketer, a good shot, and a bruising rider to hounds, and his patronage could not but give consequence to a schoolgirl. Lady St. Erth, whose discreet enquiries had early established the fact that the Beauty was heiress to something in the region of a hundred thousand pounds, from the outset smiled upon the friendship. Sir Thomas might have eaten his dinner at Stanyon every day of the week had he chosen to do so; and not only were his manners pronounced to be refreshingly natural, but he provided her ladyship with a subject for a pious lecture on the value of golden hearts that were hid under rough exteriors. Sir Thomas, cherishing no illusions on the substance of the Dowager’s heart, and unimpressed by her rank, visited Stanyon as seldom as common civility permitted, but was perfectly ready to extend his hospitality to Martin, whom he thought of as a wild colt, not vicious, but in need of breaking to bridle.

By the time Martin awoke to the realization that his little madcap friend had become the toast of the neighbourhood, Marianne, courted on all sides, was no longer hanging admiringly upon his lips, or gazing worshipfully up into his face. Instead, she was flirting in the prettiest, most unexceptionable way with several other young gentlemen. The knowledge, not only that he was in love with her, but that she unquestionably belonged to him, then burst upon Martin, and caused him to conduct himself in a style which made one poetically-minded damsel, who would not have objected to finding herself the object of his jealous regard, say that he reminded her of a black panther. Mr. Warboys, without putting himself to the trouble of deciding which of the more ferocious animals his friend resembled, stated the matter in simple, and courageously frank terms. “Y’know, old fellow,” he once told Martin, “if you had a tail, damme if you wouldn’t lash it!”

The tail, if not lashing, was certainly on the twitch when Martin reached Stanyon, but although some part of the time spent on his solitary ride home from Westerwood House had been occupied by him in dwelling upon his grievances, he also had time to reflect on the extreme unwisdom of quarrelling openly with his brother, and had no real intention of forcing an issue. Unfortunately, he had occasion to go into the Armoury, which was one of the broad galleries which flanked the Chapel Court, and was also used as a gunroom, and he found the Earl there.

Gervase was in his shirt-sleeves, trying the temper of a pair of foils. He seemed to have been engaged in oiling his pistols, for these lay in an open case on a table near him, with some rags and a bottle of oil standing beside them. He looked up as Martin entered through the door at one end of the gallery, and it occurred to Martin for the first time that he was indeed a damnably handsome man — if one had a taste for such delicate, almost womanish features.

“Oh! You here!” Martin said, in no very agreeable voice.

Gervase regarded him meditatively. “As you see. Is there any reason why I should not be here?”

“None that I know of!” Martin replied, shrugging, and walking over to a glass-fronted case which contained several sporting guns.

“I am so glad!” said Gervase. “So much that I do seems to anger you that I am quite alarmed lest I should quite unwittingly cause you offence.”

The gentle irony in his tone was not lost on Martin. He wheeled about, and said trenchantly: “If that is so, let me advise you to leave Marianne Bolderwood alone!”

Gervase said nothing, but kept his eyes on Martin’s face, their expression amused, yet watchful.

“I hope I make myself plain, brother!”

“Very plain.”

“You may think you can come into Lincolnshire, flaunting your title, and your damned dandy-airs, and amuse yourself by trifling with Miss Bolderwood, but I shall not permit it, and so I warn you!”

“Oh, tut-tut!” Gervase interrupted, laughing.

Martin took a hasty step towards him. “Understand, I’ll not have it!”

Gervase seemed to consider him for a moment. He still looked amused, and, instead of answering, he lifted the second foil from where he had laid it on the table, set both hilts across his forearm, and offered them to Martin.

Martin stared at him. “What’s this foolery?”

“Don’t you fence?”

“Fence? Of course I do!”

“Then choose a foil, and see what you can achieve with it! All these wild and whirling words don’t impress me, you know. Perhaps your sword-play may command my respect!” He paused, while Martin stood irresolute, and added softly: “No? Do you think you can’t creditably engage with such a dandified fellow as I am?”

Martin’s eyes flashed; he grasped one of the hilts, exclaiming furiously: “We’ll see that!”

“Gently! Don’t draw the blade through my hand!” Gervase said, allowing him to take the foil he had chosen. “How does the length suit you?”

“I have frequently fenced with this pair!”

“You have the advantage of me, then: I find them a trifle overlong, and not as light in hand as I could wish. However, that is a common fault.”

He moved away to the centre of the Armoury as he spoke, and waited there while Martin flung off his coat. Martin swiftly followed him, torn between annoyance and a desire to demonstrate his skill to one whom he suspected of mocking him. He knew himself to have been well-taught, and was, indeed, so much above the average at most forms of sport that he expected to give a very good account of himself. But after a few minutes he was brought to realize that he had met his master. The Earl fought with a pace and a dexterity which flustered him a little, and never did he seem to be able to break through that unwavering guard. Every attack was baffled by a close parade, and when he attempted a feint, Gervase smiled, his wrist in no way led astray, and said as he delivered a straight thrust: “Oh, no, no! If you must feint, you should oppose your forte, moving your point nearer to my forte, or you won’t very easily hit me.”

Martin returned no answer. He was panting, and the sweat was beginning to stain his shirt. Had his adversary been any other man he would have been delighted to have found himself matched with a swordsman so much superior to himself, and would not in the least have resented his inability to score a hit. But it galled him unspeakably to be unable to break through the guard of so effeminate a person as Gervase, who never seemed at any moment to be hard-pressed, or even to be exerting himself very much. He was obliged to acknowledge a number of hits, his choler steadily rising. A return from the wrist, which caught him in mid-thrust, destroyed the last rags of his temper; he parried a carte thrust half-circle, his weight thrown on to his left hip, and swiftly turned his wrist in tierce, inclining the point of the left, with the intention of crossing the Earl’s blade. But just as he was about to do so, Gervase disengaged, giving way with the point, so that it was Martin’s blade, meeting no opposition, which leaped from his hand, and not his brother’s.

“So your master taught you that trick!” Gervase said, a little out of breath. “Very few do so nowadays. But it’s dangerous, you know, unless you have very great swiftness and precision. Try again! Or have you had enough?”

“No!” Martin shot at him, snatching up his foil, and dragging his shirt-sleeve across his wet brow. “Damn you, I’m not so easily exhausted! I’ll hit you yet! I’m out of practice!”

“You might hit me out of practice; you won’t do it out of temper,” said Gervase dryly.

“Won’t I? Won’t I?” gasped Martin, stung to blind rage by this merited but decidedly provocative rebuke.

He closed the Earl’s blade, and on the instant saw that the button had become detached from his point. Gervase saw it too, and quickly retired his left foot, to get out of distance. “Take care!” he said sharply.

“ You may take care!” Martin panted, and delivered a rather wild thrust in prime. It was parried by the St. George Guard; and even as he became conscious of the enormity of what he had done, he found himself very hard-pressed indeed. He would have dropped his point at a word, but the word was not spoken. Gervase was no longer smiling, and his eyes had narrowed, their lazy good-humour quite vanished. Martin was forced to fight. A careless, almost mechanical thrust in carte over the arm was parried by a sharp beat of the Earl’s forte, traversing the line of his blade, and bearing his wrist irresistibly upwards. The Earl’s left foot came forward; his hand seized the shell of Martin’s sword, and forced it out to the right; he gripped it fast, and presented the button of his foil to Martin’s face.

“The Disarm!” he said, holding Martin’s eyes with his own.

Martin relinquished his foil. His chest was heaving; he seemed as though he would have said something, but before he could recover his breath enough to do so an interruption occurred. Theo, who, for the past few minutes, had been standing, with Miss Morville, rooted on the threshold, strode forward, ejaculating thunderously: “Martin! Are you mad? ”

Martin started, and looked round, a sulky, defensive expression on his flushed countenance. His brother laid down the foils. Miss Morville’s matter-of-fact voice broke into an uncomfortable silence. “How very careless of you, not to have observed that the button is off your point!” she said severely. “There might have been an accident, if your brother had not been sharper-eyed than you.”

“Oh, no, there might not!” Martin retorted. “I couldn’t touch him! There was no danger!”

He caught up his coat as he spoke, and, without looking at Gervase, went hastily out of the gallery.

“I expect,” said Miss Morville, with unruffled placidity, — “that swords are much like guns. My Papa was used to say, when they were boys, that he would not trust my brothers with guns unless he were there to keep an eye on them, for let a boy become only a little excited and he would forget the most commonplace precautions. I came to tell you, Lord St. Erth, that your stepmother wishes you will join her in the Amber Drawing-room. General Hawkhurst has come to pay his respects to you.”

“Thank you! I will come directly,” he replied.

“Drusilla, you will not mention to anyone — what you saw a moment ago!” Theo said.

She paused in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder. “Oh, no! Why should I, indeed? I am sure Martin would very much dislike it if anyone were to roast him for being so heedless.”

With this prosaic reply, she left the Armoury, closing the door behind her.

“Gervase, what happened?” Theo said. “How came Martin to be fencing with a naked point?”

“Oh, he tried to cross my blade, but since I am rather too old a hand to be caught by such a trick as that, it was his sword, not mine, which was lost,” Gervase said lightly. “The button was loosened, I daresay, by the fall.”

“Are you trying to tell me that he did not perceive it?”

Gervase smiled. “Why, no! But the thing was, you see, that he was so angry with me for being the better swordsman that his rage quite overthrew his judgment, and he tried to pink me. I was never in any danger, you know: he has not been so badly taught, but he lacks precision and pace.”

“So I saw! You had him clearly at your mercy, but that cannot excuse his conduct!”

“As to that, perhaps I was a little at fault,” Gervase confessed. “But, really, you know, Theo, he is such an unschooled colt that I thought he deserved a set-down! I own, I said what I knew must enrage him. No harm done: he is now very much ashamed of himself, and that must be counted as a gain.”

“I hope you may be found to be right. But — ” He broke off, his brows contracting.

“Well?”

“It happened as you have described, of course, but — he raised his eyes to his cousin’s face, and said bluntly: “Gervase, be a little more careful, I beg of you! You might not have noticed it, but I saw, in his face, such an expression of fury — I had almost said, of hatred — !”

“Yes, I did notice it,” Gervase said quietly. “He would have been happy to have murdered me, would he not?”

“No, no, don’t think it! He is, as you have said, an unschooled colt, and he has been used to being so much petted and praised — But he would not murder you!”

“It was certainly his intention, my dear Theo!”

“Not his intention!” Theo said swiftly. “His impulse, at that instant!”

“The distinction is too nice for his victim to appreciate. Come, Theo! Be plain with me, I beg of you! You tried to put me on my guard, I fancy, that first evening, when you came to my bedchamber, and drank a glass of brandy with me there. Was it against Martin that you were warning me?” He waited for a moment. “I am answered, I suppose!”

“I don’t know. I dare not say so! Only be a little wary, Gervase! If some accident were to befall you — why, I dare swear he himself would admit to being glad of it! But that he would contrive to bring about such an accident I have never believed, until I saw his face just now! The suspicion did then flash into my mind — but it must be nonsensical!”

“Theo, I do think you should have rushed in, and thrown yourself between us!” Gervase complained.

“Yes, and so I would have done had I wished to startle you into dropping your guard!” Theo retorted, laughing. “What I might have felt myself impelled to do had you appeared to me to be hard-pressed I know not! Something heroic, no doubt! But stop bamming, Gervase! What have you been doing to make Martin ready to murder you?”

“Why, I have been flaunting my title and my dandified airs in the eyes of his inamorata, and he fears she may be dazzled!”

“Oh! I collect that you have somehow contrived to meet Miss Bolderwood?”

“Yes, and I wish you will tell me why no one has ever told me of her existence! She is the sweetest sight my eyes have alighted upon since I came into Lincolnshire!”

Theo smiled, but perfunctorily, and turned a little aside, to lay the foils in their case. “She is very beautiful,” he agreed, in a colourless tone.

“An heiress too, if I have understood her father! Shall I try my fortune?”

“By all means.”

Gervase glanced quickly at his averted profile. “Theo! You too?”

Theo uttered a short laugh. “Don’t disturb yourself! I might as well aspire to the hand of a Royal Princess!” He shut the sword-case, and turned. “Come! If General Hawkhurst has honoured you with a visit, you had better make yourself a little more presentable.”

“Very true: I will do so at once!” Gervase said, rather glad to be relieved of the necessity of answering his cousin’s embittered words. From the little he had seen of both, he could not but feel that the staid Drusilla would make a more suitable bride for Theo than the livelier and by far more frivolous Marianne; he must, moreover, have been obliged to agree that there could be little hope that Sir Thomas would bestow his only child on a man in Theo’s circumstances.

He did not again see Martin until they met at the dinner-table. There was then a little constraint in Martin’s manner, but since he was so much a creature of moods this caused his mother no concern. Her mind was, in fact, preoccupied with the startling request made to her by her stepson, that she should send out cards of invitation for a ball at Stanyon. Since her disposition generally led her to dislike any scheme not of her own making, her first reaction was to announce with an air of majestic finality that it was not to be thought of; but when the Earl said apologetically that he was afraid some thought would have to be spent on the project, unless a party quite unworthy of the traditions of Stanyon were to be the result, she began to perceive that his mind was made up. An uneasy suspicion, which had every now and then flitted through her head since the episode of the Indian epergne, again made itself felt: her stepson, for all his gentle voice and sweet smile, was not easily to be intimidated. From her first flat veto, she passed to the enumeration of all the difficulties in the way of holding a ball at Stanyon at that season of the year. She was still expatiating on the subject when she took her place at the foot of the dinner-table. “Had it been Christmas, it might have been proper for us to have done something of that nature,” she said.

“Hardly, ma’am!” said Gervase, in a deprecating tone. “You had not then, I am persuaded, put off your blacks.”

This was unanswerable; and while she was thinking of some further objection, Martin, who had not been present when the scheme was first mooted, demanded to be told what was going forward. When it was made known to him, he could not dislike the project. His eyes brightened; he turned them towards Gervase, exclaiming: “I call that a famous notion! We have not had such an affair at Stanyon since I don’t know when! When is it to be?”

“I have been explaining to your brother,” said the Dowager, “that a ball held in the country at this season cannot be thought to be eligible.”

“Oh, fudge, Mama! No one removes to town until April — no one we need care for, at least! I daresay we could muster as many as fifty couples — well, twenty-five, at all events! and that don’t include all the old frights who will come only to play whist!”

“I fear that my state of health would be quite unequal to entertaining so many persons,” said the Dowager, making a determined bid for mastery.

As she had never been known to suffer even the most trifling indisposition, this announcement not unnaturally staggered her son. Before he could expostulate, however, Gervase said solicitously: “I would not for the world prejudice your health, ma’am! To be sure, to expect you to receive and to contrive for so many people would be an infamous thing for me to do! But I have been considering, you know, whether, if I sent my own chaise to convey her, my Aunt Dorothea might not be prevailed upon to drive over from Studham, to relieve you of those duties which might prove too much for your strength. I daresay, if we invited her to stay at Stanyon for a week or so, she would not altogether object to it.”

There was a pregnant silence. Theo’s firm lips twitched; the Chaplain gazed in deep absorption at the bowl of spring flowers which had replaced the epergne in the centre of the table; and Martin directed a glance of awe, not untinged with respect, at the Earl. Only Miss Morville continued to eat her dinner in complete unconcern.

“Lady Cinderfold,” said the Dowager, referring to her widowed sister-in-law in accents of loathing, “will act as hostess at Stanyon over my dead body!”

“That would be something quite out of the ordinary way,” murmured the Earl.

Miss Morville raised her eyes from the portion of fricandeau of beef on her plate, and directed a quelling look at him. She then turned her attention to her hostess, saying: “Should you find it too much for you, ma’am, if I were to write all the invitations for you, and, in general, undertake the arrangements?”

The Dowager, snatching at this straw, bestowed one of her most gracious smiles upon her, and gave the assembled company to understand that under these conditions she might be induced to sink her personal inclinations in a benevolent desire to oblige her stepson. After that, she entered in a very exhaustive way, which lent no colour to her previous assertion that she was in failing health, into all the preparations it would be necessary to make for the ball. Long before dinner was at an end, she had talked herself into good-humour; and by the time she rose from the table she had reached the felicitous stage of saying how happy she would be to welcome the dear Duchess of Rutland to Stanyon, and how happy a number of persons of quite inferior rank would be to find themselves at Stanyon.

While the inevitable card-table was being set up in the Italian Saloon, the Earl found himself standing beside Miss Morville, a little withdrawn from the rest of the party. He could not resist saying to her, with an arch lift of his brows: “I have incurred your censure, ma’am?”

She seemed surprised. “No, how should you? Oh, you mean that most ill-advised remark you made! Well, I must say, it was the outside of enough! However, it is not my business to be censuring you, my lord, and if I seemed to do so I have only to beg pardon.”

“Don’t, I entreat! I will own my fault. Shall you dislike my ball?”

“Dislike it! No, indeed! I daresay I shall enjoy it excessively.”

“I am afraid you will be put to a great deal of trouble over it.”

He expected a polite disclaimer, but she replied, candidly: “I shall, of course, because whatever I suggest Lady St. Erth will not like, until she has been brought to believe that she thought of it herself. I wish very much that she would let me contrive the whole, for there is nothing I should like better. But that would be rather too much to expect her to do, and one should never be unreasonable!”

“You would like nothing better than to order all the arrangements for a large party? I can conceive of nothing more tiresome!”

“Very likely you might not, for I think gentlemen do not excel at such things.” She looked across the room, to where Martin was discussing with his mother the various families it would be proper to invite to the ball. “I expect he will ask her particularly to send a card to the Bolderwoods,” she said sagely. “If I were you, I would not mention to her that you wish them to be invited, for it will only put up her back, if you do, and you may depend upon Martin’s good offices in that cause.”

“May I ask, ma’am,” he said, a trifle frigidly, “why you should suppose that I wish to invite the Bolderwoods?”

She raised her eyes to his face, in one of her clear, enquiring looks. “Don’t you? I quite thought that it must have been Marianne who had put the notion of a ball into your head, since you were visiting at Whissenhurst this morning.”

He hardly knew whether to be amused or angry. “Upon my word, Miss Morville! It seems that my movements are pretty closely watched!”

“I expect you will have to accustom yourself to that,” she returned. “Everything you do must be of interest to your people, you know. In this instance, you could not hope to keep your visit secret (though I cannot imagine why you should wish to do so!), for your coachman’s second granddaughter is employed at the Grange.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, and she has give such satisfaction that they mean to take her to London with them next month, which is a very gratifying circumstance.” She fixed her eyes on his face again, and asked disconcertingly: “Have you fallen in love with Miss Bolderwood?”

“Certainly not!” he replied, in a tone nicely calculated to depress pretension.

“Oh! Most gentlemen do — on sight! ” she remarked. “One cannot wonder at it, for I am sure she must be the prettiest girl imaginable. I have often reflected that it must be very agreeable to be beautiful. Mama considers that it is of more importance to have an informed mind, but I must own that I cannot agree with her.”

At this moment the Dowager called to Gervase to come to the card-table. He declined it, saying that he had letters which must be written, upon which Miss Morville was applied to. She went at once; and Martin, after fidgeting about the room for a few minutes, drew near to his brother, and said awkwardly: “You know, I didn’t mean it! That is — I beg your pardon, but — but it was you who made me fight on! And it would have been the sheerest good luck if I had pinked you!”

Gervase was in the act of raising a pinch of snuff to one nostril, but he paused. “You are very frank!” he remarked.

“Frank? Oh — ! Well, of course I didn’t mean — what I meant was that it would only be by some accident, or if you were careless, or — or something of that nature!”

“I see. I was evidently quite mistaken, for I formed the opinion that you had the very definite intention of running me through.”

“You made me as mad as fire!” Martin muttered, his eyes downcast, and his cheeks reddened.

“Yes, I do seem to have an unhappy trick of offending you, don’t I?” said the Earl.

Chapter 6

Miss Bolderwood’s name was not again mentioned between the half-brothers, Martin apparently being conscious of some awkwardness in adverting to the subject of his late quarrel with Gervase, and Gervase considering himself to be under no obligation to account to his brother for his visits to Whissenhurst Grange. These were more frequent than could be expected to meet with the approval either of Martin, or the numerous other gentlemen who paid court to the beautiful heiress; for the Earl, driving over to Whissenhurst on the day after his first encounter with Marianne to enquire politely after her well-being, after such a misadventure as had befallen her, was able to persuade her, without much difficulty, to accompany him on a drive round the neighbourhood. Informed by some chance observation that she had never yet handled a pair of highbred horses, he conceived the happy notion of offering to instruct her in this art. It took well; Sir Thomas, having early perceived, from his handling of his cattle, that the Earl was no mean whip, raised no objection; and on several mornings thereafter those of Miss Bolderwood’s admirers who happened, by some chance, to find themselves in the vicinity of Whissenhurst were revolted by the spectacle of their goddess bowling smartly along the lane under the tuition of her latest and most distinguished swain. On more than one occasion they had the doubtful pleasure of meeting him at a Whissenhurst tea-party. These informal entertainments, where tea, quadrille, and commerce were followed by an elegant supper, just suited the Earl’s humour, for his prolonged service in the Peninsula, with its generally happy-go-lucky way of life, had rendered him un appreciative of the formal tedium obtaining at Stanyon. Sir Thomas was a genial host, his lady was a notable housewife; and nothing delighted either of them more than to see a number of young persons enjoying themselves at their expense. As for Marianne, it would have been hard to have guessed which of her swains she was inclined to prefer, for she seemed equally pleased to see them all, and if one gentleman was the recipient of her particular favours one day, the next she would bestow these sunnily upon another. Nor did she neglect the members of her own sex: she had even been known to leave a hopeful and far from ineligible cavalier disconsolate merely because she had promised to go for a walk with another damsel, and would on no account break her engagement. The gentlemen said she was the most beautiful girl they had ever beheld; the ladies, for the most part, bestowed on her an even more striking testimonial: they were sure there could not anywhere be found a more good-natured girl. She had her detractors, of course; and it was not long after his arrival at Stanyon that the Earl learned from several mothers of pretty daughters that Miss Bolderwood, though well-enough, had too short an upper lip to be considered a Beauty, and was sadly deficient in accomplishments. Her performance upon the pianoforte was no more than moderate, and she had never learnt to play the harp. Nor had Lady Bolderwood ever called upon morning-visitors to admire her daughter’s latest watercolour sketch, from which it was to be apprehended that Miss Bolderwood’s talent did not lie in this direction either.

Martin was nearly always to be found at the Whissenhurst tea-parties; and once, having received a particular invitation from Lady Bolderwood, Theo drove over with the Earl to bear his part in an informal dance. Gervase, watching how Theo’s eyes followed Marianne, could only be sorry: it did not appear to him that she held him in greater regard than himself, or Martin, or the inarticulate Mr. Warboys.

Cards of invitation were sent out from Stanyon; Marianne was in transports, and if it did not quite suit Lady Bolderwood’s sense of propriety to permit her to appear at a regular ball before she had been brought out in London at a ball of her own parents’ contriving, Sir Thomas could not be brought to see that such niceties mattered a jot. Lady Bolderwood’s scruples were overborne, and Marianne could be happy, and had only to decide between the rival merits of her white satin dress with the Russian bodice, fastened in front with little pearls; and one of white crape, trimmed with blonde lace, and worn over a satin slip.

Her happiness, with that of every other lady who had been honoured with an invitation to the ball, very soon became alloyed by anxiety. The weather underwent a change, and in place of bright spring days, with the wind blowing constantly from the east, a stormy period threatened to set in. A gay little party of damsels, seeking violets in the woods about Whissenhurst, were caught in such a severe downpour that they were soaked almost to the skin; and when anxious questions were put to such weather-wise persons as gardeners and farmers, these worthies would only shake their heads, and say that it showed no sign of fairing-up. The date of the ball had been carefully chosen to coincide with the full moon, but not even so indulgent a parent as Sir Thomas would for a moment consider the possibility of driving some six miles to a party of pleasure if the moon were to be obscured by clouds, and the coachman’s vision still further impaired by driving rain.

“Do we despair, Miss Morville?” asked the Earl.

“No, but if the weather continues in this odious way, I fear you will find your rooms very thin of company,” she replied. “The people who are coming from a distance, and are to sleep here, will come, because they will set out in daylight, you know, and they will hope that the rain won’t come on, or that they may drive away from it. I should think you may be sure of the party from Belvoir, but I do feel that you should perhaps fortify your mind to the likelihood of your immediate neighbours not caring to set forth in wet, cloudy weather.”

“I will endeavour to do so,” promised the Earl gravely.

Three days before the ball, the weather, so far from showing signs of improvement, promised nothing but disaster. The prophets said gloomily that it was banking up for a storm, and they were right. The day was tempestuous; and when the Stanyon party assembled for dinner even Martin, who had hitherto refused to envisage the possibility of the inclement weather’s persisting, took his place at the table with a very discontented expression on his face, and announced that he thought the devil had got into the skies.

“Well, if it continues in this way, we must postpone the ball,” Gervase said cheerfully.

“Yes! And find everyone gone off to London!” retorted Martin.

He could talk of nothing but the probable ruin of their plans; and since no representation sufficed to make him think more hopefully of the prospects, not even his mother was sorry when, shortly after the party rose from the table, he said, after a series of cavernous yawns, that he rather thought he would go to bed, since he had the head-ache, and everything was a dead bore.

The usual whist set had been formed, and so fierce were the battles fought over the table that none of the four players noticed that the wind was no longer rattling the shutters, and moaning round the corners of the Castle, until Miss Morville, who sat quietly stitching by the fire, lifted her head, and said: “Listen! the wind has dropped!”

“I rather thought it would,” observed the Dowager, gathering up her trick. “Indeed, I said as much this morning. ‘Depend upon it,’ I said to Abney, ‘the wind will drop, and we shall have it fine for our party.’ I flatter myself I am seldom at fault in my calculations. Dear me, St. Erth, I am sure if I had known you had the King of Diamonds in your hand we might have taken a couple of tricks more!”

“I am very much afraid, ma’am, that this is the lull before a storm,” said Theo.

So indeed it proved. After a brief period of quiet, a distant but menacing rumble of thunder was heard; and the Dowager instantly said that she had suspected as much, since nothing so surely gave Martin the head-ache as a thunderstorm.

After half an hour, during which time thunder grumbled intermittently, Miss Morville announced that she too would go to bed. She said that she could wish that, if a storm there must be, it would lose no time in bursting into full force, and thus be the more quickly finished.

“Poor Drusilla!” Theo said, smiling. “Do you dislike it so very much?”

“I do dislike it,” she replied, with dignity, “but I am well aware that to be afraid of the thunder is unworthy of any person of the least intelligence. The noise is certainly disagreeable, but it cannot, after all, harm one!” With these stout words, she folded up her needlework, bade goodnight to the company, and went away to her bedchamber.

“I fear we must expect to spend a disturbed night,” said Mr. Clowne, shaking his head. “There has been a feeling of oppression in the atmosphere throughout the day which presages a very considerable storm. I trust your ladyship’s rest will not be impaired.”

“I have no apprehension of it,” she responded. “I do not fear the elements, I assure you. Indeed, I should think it a very remarkable circumstance if I were to lose my sleep on account of them. We have very severe storms at Stanyon: I have often observed as much. Ah, here is the tea-table being brought in at last! What a pity Drusilla should not have waited, for she might have dispensed the tea, you know, and now I shall be obliged to do so myself.”

As the evening wore on, the storm increased in violence, the reverberations of one crash of thunder hardly dying away before another, and even more severe clatter, seeming to roll round the sky above the Castle, succeeded it. Powerful gusts of wind buffeted the windows, and drove the smoke downwards in the chimneys; the howl of the gusts, sweeping round the many angles of the Castle, rose sometimes to a shriek which could be heard through the loudest peals of the thunder.

The Chaplain having meekly retired to bed when his patroness sought her own couch, the Earl and his cousin were left to amuse themselves as best they might. The Earl lit one of his cigarillos, but Theo declined joining him. “And I wish you may not repent your temerity, when my aunt detects — as I promise you she will! — the aroma of tobacco in this room tomorrow!” he added.

Gervase laughed. “Will she give me one of her tremendous scolds, do you think? I shall shake in my shoes: she is the most terrifying woman!”

His cousin smiled. “What a complete hand you are, St. Erth! Much you care for her scolds! All this mild compliance is nothing but a take-in: you engage her at every turn!”

“Military training, Theo: a show of strength to deceive the enemy!” said Gervase firmly. “But the room will reek of wood-smoke in the morning, and my iniquity may be undiscovered. It is a very bad habit, however: one that I learned in Spain, and have tried in vain to abandon. I don’t find that snuff answers the purpose at all. Good God, what a gust! You will be blown out of your turret!”

“Not I! The walls are so thick I shall spend the night very much more snugly than you will, I daresay.”

“Don’t think it! I became inured to this kind of thing in Spain, and very soon learned to sleep peacefully through a veritable tornado — in a draughty billet, too, with no glass in the windows, but only a few boards nailed across them to protect us from the worst of the weather. I have taken the precaution, too, of telling Turvey to let the fire die down in my room, and thus need not fear to be smothered by smoke. Like her ladyship, I guessed how it would be!”

“At all events, there is a very good chance that it will blow itself out, and we may expect better weather after it. You need not despair of your ball! But it is not, I fancy, so violent a storm as you might suppose from the way the wind screeches round us. I am accustomed to it, but, after so long an absence, you,I imagine, might well believe yourself to be listening to the screams of souls in torment.”

“No, I well recall the discomforts of Stanyon in inclement weather. I shall go to bed. I am sure I know not how it is, but an evening spent in the company of my stepmother fatigues me more than a dozen cavalry charges!”

“To that also I am accustomed,” Theo said gravely.

They left the Saloon together, the Earl’s hand tucked lightly into his cousin’s arm. The candles and the lamps were still burning in the galleries and on the Grand Staircase, the Earl having, in the gentlest manner possible, informed his household that, since it was not his habit to retire at ten o’clock, he did not wish to find the Castle plunged in darkness at this hour. A couple of footmen were hovering about in a disinterested way, their purpose being to extinguish the lights as soon as he should have shut his bedchamber-door. The Earl smiled faintly, and murmured: “My poor Turvey! He cannot reconcile himself to the rigours of life in the country, and wonders that he should be required to grope his way to bed by the light of a single candle. I wish he may not leave my service, as a result of all these discomforts! He understands my boots as no other valet has ever done.”

“And your neckcloths?” said Theo quizzically.

“No, no, how can you do me such an injustice? Mine is the only hand employed in their arrangement! But you have set my doubts at rest, Theo! This Oriental style, which you so rightly deprecate, is too high — by far too high! You shall see tomorrow how beautifully I am able to tie a trone d’amour! ”

“Go to bed! It is by far too late for your funning!” Theo said, laughing at him. “Sleep well!”

“No fear I shall not: I have been yawning this hour past! Good-night!”

The Earl passed into his bedchamber, where “Purvey awaited him by the embers of a dying fire. “A rough night!” he remarked.

“Extremely so, my lord.”

“My cousin, however, believes that we may not indulge our optimism too far in expecting a period of better weather after the storm.”

“Indeed, my lord?”

“I daresay,” said the Earl, drawing the pin from the over-tall Oriental-tie, and laying it down on his dressing-table, “that if you were to step out into the open you would not find the storm to be so severe as you might suppose.”

“Unless your lordship particularly desires me to do so, I should prefer not to expose myself to the elements.”

“My unreasonable demands of you fall short of that,” said Gervase gravely.

Turvey bowed; it was plain that he was not to be won over, and his master abandoned the attempt, permitting himself to be undressed in silence. When he had been assisted to put on his dressing-gown, he told the man he might go, and sat down at his dressing-table to pare his nails. Turvey gathered up the discarded raiment, bade him a punctilious good-night, and withdrew into the adjoining dressing-room, where he could be heard moving about for some minutes, opening and shutting drawers, and brushing coats. Gervase, having critically regarded his slender fingertips, extinguished the candles in the brackets beside the mirror, forced a wedge of paper in the door on to the gallery, which showed a disagreeable tendency to rattle, and climbed into his formidable bed. It was hung with very heavy curtains of crimson velvet, fringed and tasselled with gold, but Gervase, in whom several years of campaigning had engendered a dislike of being shut in, would never permit his valet to draw these. He disposed himself on his pillows, shifted the position of his bedside candle, and, with some misgiving, opened the book which had been pressed on him by the Dowager, after he had very unwisely owned that it had never come in his way. It was entitled Self-Control,and since the Dowager had described it to him as a very pretty and improving book, and one which would do him a great deal of good to read, he had not much expectation of being amused. The thunder went on rumbling and crackling overhead, and the wind was now driving rain against the windows, but this continuous noise had as little power as Mrs. Branton’s moral tale to keep him awake. He very soon found that the printed words were running into one another, tossed the book aside, blew out his candle, and within ten minutes was soundly asleep.

He awoke very suddenly, he knew not how many hours later, as though some unusual sound, penetrating his dreams, had jerked him back to consciousness. The room was in dense darkness, the fire in the hearth having died quite away; and he could hear nothing but the rain beating against the windows, and the howl of the wind, more subdued now, round the corner of the building. Yet even as he wondered whether perhaps he had been awakened by the fall of a tile from the roof, or the slamming of a door left carelessly open, he received so decided an impression that he was not alone in the room, that he raised himself quickly on to one elbow, straining his eyes to see through the smothering darkness. He could hear nothing but the wind and the rain, but the impression that someone was in the room rather grew on him than abated, and he said sharply: “Who is there?”

There was no answer, nor was there any sound within the room to betray the presence of another, but he could not be satisfied. Grasping the bed-clothes, he flung them aside in one swift movement, and leaped up. As his feet touched the floor, something creaked, and his quickened ears caught a sound which might have been made by a softly-closing door. He reached the windows, grazing his shin against the leg of the dressing-table, and dragged one of the curtains back. A faint, gray light was admitted into the room. He could perceive no one, and strode back to the bedside, groping on the table for his tinder-box. His candle lit, he held it up, keenly looking about him. He noticed that his wedge was still firm in the door leading to the gallery; he glanced towards the door to his dressing-room, and saw that that too was shut. He set the candle down, thrust his feet into a pair of gay Morocco slippers, and shrugged himself into his dressing-gown, aware, as he did so, of the unlikelihood of anyone’s entering his room at such an advanced hour of the night, but still convinced that he had not imagined the whole.

A board cracked outside the room. He picked up the candlestick, and wrenched open his door, stepping out on to the gallery. He found himself staring at Martin, who, fully dressed, except for his shoes, and carrying a lantern, had halted in his tracks, just beyond his door, and was looking in a startled, defensive way over his shoulder. “Martin!” he exclaimed. “What the devil — ?”

“Don’t kick up such a dust!” Martin begged him, in a savage but a lowered voice. “Do you want to wake my mother?”

“What are you doing?” Gervase demanded, more softly, but with a good deal of sternness in his tone. “Where have you been?”

“What’s that to you?” Martin retorted. “I suppose I need not render you an account of my movements! I have been out!”

“ Out? ”Gervase repeated incredulously. “In this hurricane?”

“Why shouldn’t I go out? I’m not afraid of a paltry thunderstorm!”

“Be so good as to stop trying to humbug me!” Gervase said, with more acidity in his voice than his brother had ever heard. “You had the head-ache! you went early to bed!”

“Oh, well!” Martin muttered, reddening a little. “I — I recalled that — that I had an appointment in the village!”

“An appointment in the village! Pray, in which village?”

“Cheringham — but it’s no concern of yours!” said Martin sulkily.

“It appears to me to be raining, but I observe that you are not at all wet!” said Gervase sardonically.

“Of course I am not! I had my driving-coat on, and I left it, with my boots, downstairs! There is no need for you to blab to my mother that I was out tonight — though I daresay that is just what you mean to do!” He cast his brother a look of dislike, and said: “I suppose that curst door woke you! The wind blew it out of my hand.”

“Which door?”

“Oh, the one into the court, of course!” He jerked his head towards a door at the end of the gallery, which, as the Earl knew, led to a secondary flight of stairs. “I came in by that way: I often do!”

Gervase looked at him under slightly knit brows. “Very well, but what brought you to my room?”

“Well, I am bound to pass your room, if I come up by that stairway!”

“You are not bound to enter my room, however.”

“Enter your room! That’s a loud one! As though I should wish to!”

“Did you not, in fact, do so?”

“Of course I did not! Why should I? I wish you will be a little less busy, St. Erth! If I choose to go to Cheringham on affairs of my own — ”

“It is naturally no concern of mine,” interposed Gervase. “You choose wild nights for your intrigues!”

“My — ?” Martin gave a crack of laughter, hurriedly smothered. “Ay, that’s it! Old Scrooby’s daughter, I daresay!”

“I beg pardon. You will allow that if I am to be expected to swallow this story some explanation should be vouch-safed to me.”

“Well, I ain’t going to explain it to you,” said Martin, scowling at him.

A glimmer of light at the angle of the gallery in which they stood and that which ran along the north side of the court, caught the Earl’s eye. He took a quick step towards it, and Miss Morville, who, shrouded, lamp in hand, had been peeping cautiously round the corner of the wall, came forward, blushing in some confusion, but whispering: “Indeed, I beg your pardon, but I thought it must be housebreakers! I could not sleep for this horrid storm, and it seemed to me that I heard footsteps outside the house, and then a door slammed! I formed the intention of slipping upstairs to wake Abney, only then I heard voices, and thought I could recognize yours, my lord, so I crept along the gallery to see if it were indeed you.” She looked at Martin. “Was it you who let the door slam into the court? Have you been out in this rain and wind?”

“Yes, I have!” said Martin, in a furious undervoice. “I have been down to the village, and pray, what have either of you to say to that?”

“Only that I wish you will be more careful, and not give me such a fright!” said Miss Morville, drawing her shawl more securely about her. “And, if I were you, Martin, I would not stand talking here, for if you do so much longer you will be bound to wake Lady St. Erth.”

This common-sense reminder had the effect of sending him off on tiptoe. Miss Morville, conscious of her bare toes, which her nightdress very imperfectly concealed, and of the neat cap tied under her chin, would have followed him had she not happened to look into the Earl’s face. He was watching Martin’s retreat, and, after considering him for a moment, Miss Morville asked softly: “Pray, what has occurred, sir?”

He brought his eyes down to her face. “Occurred?”

“You seem to be a good deal put-out. Is it because Martin stole away to the village? Boys will do so, you know!”

“That! No! — if it was true!”

“Oh, I expect it was!” she said. “I thought, did not you? that he had been drinking what my brother Jack calls Old Tom.”

“I know of no reason why he must go to the village to do so.”

“Oh, no! I conjecture,” said Miss Morville, with the air of one versed in these matters, “that it was to see some cocking that he went.”

“Cocking!”

“At the Red Lion. To own the truth, that was what I thought he meant to do when he said he had the headache and would go to bed.”

“But, in God’s name, why could he not have told me so?”

“They never do,” she replied simply. “My brothers were just the same. In general, you know, one’s parents frown upon cocking, on account of the low company it takes a boy into. Depend upon it, that was why he would not tell you.”

“My dear ma’am, Martin can hardly regard me in the light of a parent!”

“No — at least, only in a disagreeable way,” she said. “You are so much older than he, and have so much more experience besides, that I daresay the poor boy feels you are a great distance removed from him. Moreover, he resents you very much at present. If I were you, I would not mention his having gone out tonight.”

“I shall certainly not do so. How deep is his resentment, Miss Morville? You seem to know so much that perhaps you know that too!”

“Dear me, no! I daresay he will recover from it when he is better acquainted with you. I never heeded him very much, and I expect it will be better if you do not either.”

“You are full of excellent advice, ma’am!”

“Well, I am not clever, but I am thought to have a great deal of common-sense, though I can see that you mean to be satirical,” she replied calmly. “Good-night! — I think the wind is less, and we may perhaps be able to sleep at last.”

She flitted away down the gallery, and the Earl returned to his bedchamber. Sleep was far from him, however, and after drawing the curtain across the window again he began to pace slowly about the room, thinking over all that had passed. The creak he had heard might, he supposed, have been caused merely by the settling of a chair; but he could not charge his nerves with having led him to imagine the closing of a door. He could have sworn that a latch had clicked very softly, and this sound was too distinctive to be confused with the many noises of the storm. He glanced towards the door into his dressing-room, and took a step towards it. Then he checked himself, reflecting that his silent visitor would scarcely return to his room that night. Instead of locking the door, he bent to pick up his handkerchief, which had fallen on the floor beside the bed, and stood for a moment, kneading it unconsciously between his hands, and wondering whether the click he had heard had not been in the room after all, but had been caused by Martin’s closing of the door leading to the stairway down the gallery. He could not think it, but it was useless to cudgel his brain any further at that hour. He tossed the handkerchief on to his pillow, and took off his dressing-gown. Suddenly his abstracted gaze became intent. He picked the handkerchief up again, and held it near the candle, to perceive more clearly the monogram which had caught his eye. Delicately embroidered on the fine lawn were the interlinked initials, M and F.

Chapter 7

A bright day succeeded the storm, with a fresh wind blowing, but the sun shining, and great cumulus clouds riding high in a blue sky. Some of the havoc wrought from the night’s tornado could be observed from the windows of the breakfast-parlour; and when Martin strode in presently, he reported that at least one tree had been struck in the Home Wood, and that shattered tiles from the roof of the Castle littered the courts.

“I trust your lordship’s rest was not too much disturbed?” Mr. Clowne said solicitously. “It was indeed a tempestuous night!”

“His lordship will tell you, sir,” said Theo, “that, having bivouacked in Spain, an English thunderstorm has no power to disturb his rest. He was boasting of it to me last night. I daresay you never enjoyed a quieter sleep, eh, Gervase?”

“Did I boast? Then I am deservedly set-down, for I must own that my rest was not quite undisturbed.” He met his brother’s wary, kindling glance across the table, and added, meeting those dark eyes smilingly, but with irony in his own lazy gaze: “By the by, Martin, I fancy this must be yours!”

Martin caught the handkerchief tossed to him, and inspected it casually. “Yes, it is. Did you find it amongst your own?”

“No,” said Gervase. “You dropped it.”

Martin looked up quickly, suspicion in his face. “Oh! I daresay I might have: it can easily happen, after all!” He turned away, and began to tell his cousin about the damage caused by the storm which had so far been reported.

“Then, as I really mean to ride towards Hatherfield this morning,” observed the Earl, “I shall no doubt be besieged with demands for new roofs and chimney-stacks. What shall I say to my importunate tenants, Theo?”

“Why, that they must carry their complaints to your agent! Do you indeed mean to go there? I had abandoned hope of bringing you to a sense of your obligations! Mind, now, that you don’t deny old Yelden the gratification of receiving a visit from you! He has been asking me for ever when he may hope to see you. You have no more devoted a pensioner, I daresay! He swears it was he who taught you to climb your first tree!”

“So he did, indeed! I will certainly visit him,” Gervase promised.

Martin, who had become engaged in conversation with the Chaplain, seemed not to be paying any heed to this interchange; nor, unless some direct enquiry obliged him to do so, did he again address his brother while the meal lasted. He strolled away, when the party rose from the table; and, upon Mr. Clowne’s excusing himself, Theo looked shrewdly at his cousin, and said: “Now what’s amiss?”

The Earl raised his brows. “Why do you ask me that? Do I seem to you to be out of humour?”

“No, but it’s easy to see that Martin has taken one of his pets.”

“Oh, must there be a reason for his pets? I had not thought of it! Are you very busy today? Go with me to Hatherfield!”

“Willingly. I shall be glad to see what damage may have been done to the saplings in the new plantation, Cheringham way. I daresay we may meet Hayle there, and I must have a word with him about fencing. You might care to talk to him yourself!”

“Pray hold me excused! I know nothing of fencing, and should infallibly betray my ignorance. It will not do for my bailiff to hold me cheap!”

His cousin laughed, but shook his head at him. He went off to transact some trifling matter of business, but in less than twenty minutes he rejoined the Earl, and they set forward on their ride.

The most direct route to the village of Hatherfield lay through the Home Park and across a stream to Cheringham Spinney. The ground on either side of the stream was marshy, and a long wooden bridge had been thrown across it by the Earl’s grandfather. No more than a footbridge, it was not wide enough to permit of two horsemen riding abreast of it. After the storm, the stream was a miniature torrent, with evidences of the night’s havoc swirling on its churned-up flood. The nervous chestnut Gervase was riding jibbed at the bridge, but, after a little tussle with his rider, stepped delicately on to the wooden planks. “ You would not do for a campaign, my friend!” Gervase chided him gently, patting his sweating neck. “Courage, now!”

“Take care, Gervase!” Theo ejaculated, hard on his heels, but reining back. “Gervase, stop! ”

“Why, what is it?” Gervase said, obediently halting, and looking over his shoulder.

“It won’t hold! Back!” Theo said, backing his own horse off the bridge. He dismounted quickly, thrust his bridle into the Earl’s hand, and went squelching through the boggy ground to the edge of the swollen stream. “I thought as much!” he called. “One of the supports is scarcely standing! Good God, what a merciful thing that Hayle was speaking to me about the supports only five days ago, and I recalled it in time! One of those great branches must have been hurled against it: it is cracked almost right through!”

“No wonder, then, that Orthes refused to face it!” said Gervase. “Poor fellow, I maligned you, didn’t I? You are wiser by far than your master, and would have spared him an ignominious wetting!”

“A wetting!” Theo exclaimed, coming back to dry ground. “You might think yourself fortunate to escape with no worse than that! There are boulders in the streambed: if you had ridden this way alone, and been stunned perhaps — ! I blame myself: I should have had this bridge attended to when Hayle first spoke to me of it! My dear Gervase, it is very well to laugh, but you might have sustained an ugly injury — if not a fatal injury! Now what are we to do?”

“Ford the stream, of course. Orthes won’t like it, so this well-mannered roan of yours shall give him a lead.”

Theo took the bridle from him again, and remounted. “Very well, but take care how you go! The water has risen so much that you can’t perceive the rocks — and, I assure you, there are several!”

Though the muddied water did indeed hide the rocks, it was not very deep, scarcely rising above the horses’ knees. Gervase was obliged to acknowledge, however, that a fall from the bridge might have resulted in a broken limb or a concussion, for the boulders were numerous, making it necessary for them to pick their way very slowly across the stream. Once Orthes stumbled, but his master held him together, and the passage was accomplished in safety. “An adventurous ride!” remarked Gervase merrily. “I am glad you were with me, Theo. A tumble into this dirty water would not have suited me at all. And what my poor Turvey will have to say to my boots when he sees them I shudder to think of! Ah, now, behold the guardian of the bridge — a trifle late, but you can see how zealous!”

He pointed with his riding-whip down the rough track that lay before them to where a ruddy-cheeked urchin in a smock and frieze breeches was striding importantly towards them with a red handkerchief attached to a hazel-wand carried in the manner of a standard before him.

“Well, Ensign, and who may you be?” the Earl enquired, smiling down at the boy. “Horatius, I fancy!”

“That’s Parson,” disclaimed the urchin. “I’m nobbut Tom Scrooby, come to mind the bridge, and see no one don’t come acrost, your honour, because it’s clean busted.” His round eyes, having thoroughly taken in the Earl, travelled to Theo. He pulled his sandy forelock. “Mr. Martin said as how he would tell Mr. Hayle, sir, and Father said when he come home that I could mind the bridge till Mr. Hayle come down to see it.”

“Mr. Martin — !” Theo checked himself. “Very well! See you mind it carefully, Tom! Mr. Hayle will be here presently.”

The Earl flicked a shilling to Master Scrooby, and set his horse in motion down the ride. Orthes was encouraged to break into an easy canter, but in a moment or two the roan caught up with him. Theo said in his quiet way: “You had better tell me what it is that troubles you, Gervase. If you are thinking that Martin should have warned you, I daresay he might not have heard you say that you would ride to Hatherfield this morning.”

“Is that what you think?”

“No,” said Theo bluntly.

“Nor do I think it. Do you know, I am becoming a little tired of Martin? Perhaps he would be happier at Studham after all. Or, at any rate, I should be.”

His cousin rode on beside him in silence, frowning slightly. After a pause, the Earl said: “You don’t agree?”

“That he would be happier there? No. That doesn’t signify, however. If you wish him to leave Stanyon, so be it! It will mean a breach, for he will not leave without making a deal of noise. Lady St. Erth, too, will not be silent, nor will she remain at Stanyon. What reason will you give for banishing Martin when he and she publish their wrongs to the rest of our relations?”

The Earl let Orthes drop to a walk. “Must I give any?”

“Unless you wish it to be thought that you have acted from caprice, or — which perhaps might be said by those who do not know you well — from rancour.”

There was a pause. “How very longheaded you are, Theo!” Gervase complained. “You are quite right, of course. But what is the boy about? Does he hope to drive me away from Stanyon? He cannot be so big a clodpole!”

Theo shrugged. “There is no saying what he may hope. But you cannot, I believe, shut your doors to him merely because he fenced once with the button off his foil, and did not warn you that a bridge was unsafe.”

“Ah, there is a little more than that!” Gervase said.

“What more?”

Gervase hesitated. “Why, I did not mean to tell you this, but I woke last night to the conviction that someone was in my room.”

Theo turned his head to stare at him under his brows. “In your room? Martin?”

“I can’t tell that. I have certain reasons for suspecting it may have been he, but by the time I was up, and could pull back my curtain, there was no one there.”

“Good God! Gervase, are you sure of this?”

“No, I am not sure, but I think that someone entered my room through the dressing-room. I heard what sounded to me like the click of a lock.”

“I cannot think it! Why, if — But what reason have you to think it was Martin?”

“I found him on the gallery outside my room.”

“ What? ”

“He said that he had been out — to Cheringham, a statement which I was disinclined to believe. Miss Morville, however, who was roused by the slamming of a door, considers that he may well have been speaking the truth. She seems to think he went there to see a cockfight.”

“Very likely. But I had no idea of this! I thought he had had the head-ache! And you believe — ”

“No, no, I believe nothing! But I have a strong notion I shall take my pistols to bed with me while I remain at Stanyon! It will be quite like Peninsular days.”

Theo smiled. “You have brought some desperate habits home with you! Only don’t rouse the household by firing at a mouse which is unlucky enough to disturb your rest!”

“Nothing less than a rat, I promise you!” Gervase said gravely.

They proceeded on their way without further mishap. The Earl faithfully visited his old friend, Yelden; his cousin inspected the new plantation; and they returned to Stanyon at noon, by way of the main avenue, which traversed the Home Park from the seventeenth-century lodge, with its wrought-iron gates, to the original Gate-tower of the Castle, still in remarkably good preservation, but no longer guarding a drawbridge. The moat having been filled in, the tower served no particular purpose, but figured in the guidebooks as a fine example of fourteenth-century architecture. Through its vaulted archway the east, and main, entrance to the Castle was reached, which opened on to what had once been the outer bailey, and was now a handsome court, laid out with a broad gravel drive, and formal flower-beds.

As the cousins rode through the archway, a sporting curricle came into sight, drawn up by the steps leading to the front-door. A smart-looking groom was standing at the heads of the wheelers; and the equipage plainly belonged to someone aspiring to the highest crack of fashion, since it was drawn by four horses. This made Theo exclaim that he could not imagine who could have come to visit Stanyon in such a turn-out. He sounded scornful, but Gervase said in mock-reproof that he showed a shocking ignorance. “A curricle-and- four, my dear Theo, is the mark of the Nonesuch, let me tell you! Now, whom have you in Lincolnshire who — Good God! I should know those horses!” He spurred forward as he spoke, and a gentleman in a driving-coat of white drab, and a hat with a high, conical crown and beaver brim, who had been conferring with Abney at the head of the wide stone steps, turned, saw him, and came down the steps again, calling out: “Hallo, there, Ger! Turn out, man! the enemy is upon you!”

“Lucy, by all that’s wonderful!” the Earl ejaculated, sliding from the saddle, and gripping both his friend’s hands. “My dear fellow! Where have you sprung from?”

“Been staying with the Caldbecks, dear old boy,” explained his visitor. “Couldn’t leave the country without seeing you! Now don’t, don’t think yourself bound to invite me to put up here! My man is following me with all my baggage, but I see how it is — you have no room!”

An airy gesture indicated the sprawling pile behind the speaker; a pair of bright eyes quizzed the Earl, who laughed, and retorted: “An attic — we will find room for you in an attic! Theo, can we house this fellow, do you think? My cousin, Lucy — Theo, this is Captain Lucius Austell — oh, no! I beg pardon! It is Lord Ulverston! When did you sell out, Lucy?”

“Not so long after you,” replied Ulverston, exchanging a cordial handshake with Theo. “M’father felt, when m’grandfather died, that he couldn’t have the three of us serving, so it fell to me to sell out. I told him I might as easily be killed in the streets of London as on any military service — never saw such a rabble of traffic in my life! Lisbon’s nothing to it, dear boy! — but nothing would do for him but to have me in England!”

By this time, Theo had grasped that his cousin’s friend was the heir to the Earl of Wrexham, who had lately succeeded to his father’s dignities. He enquired civilly after his youngest brother, Cornelius, whom he had once met in the house of a common acquaintance, and the Viscount replied, with the insouciance which characterized him: “Haven’t a notion how he is! Think he’s on the West Indian station, but these naval fellows, you know, jaunter about the world so that there’s no keeping up with them at all! Corney means to be a Rear or a Vice, or some such thing, but with the Frogs rompe’d, and poor old Boney sent off to some curst island or another, devil a bit of promotion will there be! Said so to Freddy, when I sold out, but he’s just got his company, and thinks he’ll command the regiment in a brace of shakes. D’you know my brother Freddy? No? Very dull dog: ought to have been the eldest! Often thought so!”

The Earl, who had been inspecting the horses, interrupted, saying over his shoulder: “How do you like ‘em, Lucy?”

“Why, you old horse-chaunter, didn’t you sell ‘em to me with a warranty they were sixteen-mile-an-hour tits? Not a second above fifteen-and-a-half — word of a gentleman! Now, Ger, why did you sell ‘em to me? Four good ‘uns — complete to a shade!”

“Oh, my cousin preached economy to me! You may say they are my breakdowns!”

“Economy!” exclaimed Theo. “Pray, what did you give for your grays?”

“Grays?” said the Viscount. “Ger, not Bingham’s grays? Well, by God, if I had known he had a mind to sell them — !”

His cloak-bag having been unstrapped from the back of the curricle, and borne into the house, the Viscount waved dismissal to his henchman, saying: “Take ‘em away, Clarence! take ‘em away!” and tucked a hand in the Earl’s arm. “Well, old fellow, how does it suit you after all? You look pretty stout!”

Theo took his bridle from Gervase, saying that he must go to the stables, and would lead Orthes. Gervase smiled his thanks, and led the Viscount into the Castle.

“I hope you mean to stay at Stanyon for several weeks, Lucy,” he said. “I warn you, however, that it is a dreadful place! I daresay my stepmother will dislike it excessively that you have come to visit me — and in such a rig!”

“Ger! The Four-Horse Club!” protested the Viscount, shocked.

“I am aware. She will think you a coxcomb, and you will leave Stanyon tomorrow, routed by her Roman nose!”

“Parrot-faced, is she?” said the Viscount, interested. “Lay you a monkey she don’t peck me! Dear boy, did you ever see my aunts? Three of ‘em, all parrot-faced, and all hot at hand! Father’s frightened of ‘em — m’mother’s frightened of ‘em — Freddy won’t face ‘em! Only person who can handle ‘em’s me! No bamming — true as I stand here! Ask anyone!”

Whatever his success might have been in captivating his aunts, it seemed, for the first few minutes after his presentation to the Dowager, as though she must be reckoned amongst his failures. He had shed his driving-coat, a preposterous garment of inordinate length and a superfluity of shoulder-capes, but whatever might have been gained by this was lost, Gervase informed him, by the consequent revelation of a single-breasted coat with a long waist, a kerseymere waistcoat of blue and yellow stripes, white corduroy small-clothes, and short boots with immensely long tops. A black-spotted muslin cravat, and a Stanhope Crop to his brown locks added the final touches to his appearance, and did nothing to recommend him to his hostess. Her instinct led her to eye with revulsion any friend of her stepson, and her consequence was offended by his having awaited no invitation to visit Stanyon. On the other hand, his rank could not but make him acceptable to her; and it very soon transpired that she had once stood up for two dances at a Harrogate Assembly with his Uncle Lucius. By the time she had discovered, by a series of exhaustive questions and recollections, that a connection of hers, whom she traced through several marriages, had actually married the Viscount’s cousin Amelia, the enormities of his dress and his lack of ceremony were alike forgiven, and she was ready to declare him to be a very pretty-behaved young man, and one whom she was glad to welcome to Stanyon. His man arriving at Stanyon during the course of the afternoon, in a hired post-chaise piled high with his baggage, he was able, before dinner, to change the insignia of the Four-Horse Club for the propriety of knee-breeches and a dark coat, and thus to confirm himself in her good graces. She hoped he might be persuaded to remain at Stanyon for the ball. He was all compliance and good-nature; led her in to dinner, sat on her right hand at the table, and regaled her with the details, with which she had long desired to be furnished, of the extraordinary circumstances leading to his Aunt Agatha’s second marriage. Since his conversation was freely embellished with such cant terms as never failed to incur rebuke from her when they passed the lips of her son and her stepson, these gentlemen had nothing to do, according to their separate dispositions, but to admire the address which could carry off such unconventionalities, or to wonder at the unpredictability of elderly ladies.

Martin, who had sustained a painful interview with his cousin, sat down to dinner in a mood of offended hauteur. The table having been rearranged to accommodate the unexpected guest, he was seated on his half-brother’s left hand; and he took advantage of an animated discussion on the rival merits of Brighton and Scarborough as watering-places to say to Gervase in an angry undervoice: “I collect that you rode to Hatherfield this morning, and found the bridge unsafe! I daresay you may have said that you had that intention, but I was not attending! In any event, I had warned Hayle already that the bridge had been damaged!”

“In fact,” said Gervase, “had I broken my neck you would have been inconsolable.”

“No, I shouldn’t,” said Martin bluntly. “But to say that I tried to contrive that you should is the outside of enough! Break your neck indeed! In that paltry stream!”

“Don’t lie to me, but own that you did hear me say I would ride to Hatherfield, and hoped that I might tumble into a very muddy river!”

“Oh, well — !” Martin said, reddening, but grinning in spite of himself. He found that Gervase was regarding him thoughtfully, and added, in a defensive tone: “It’s no concern of mine where you choose to ride! Of course, if you had asked me — ! However, you did not, and as for there being the least danger of your being drowned — pooh!” He appeared to find some awkwardness in continuing the discussion, and said: “You won’t have forgot that we are to go to Whissenhurst this evening. I have ordered the carriage; for Drusilla goes too. Do you care to accompany me, or shall you drive yourself?”

“No, I don’t go. Present my compliments and my excuses to Lady Bolderwood, if you please!” Gervase turned from him, as he spoke, to address some remark to Miss Morville, who, never having visited Scarborough, had retired from the argument still being carried on by the other persons seated at the table.

When the ladies presently withdrew, Martin also left the table, saying that he must not keep Miss Morville waiting. Theo, suggesting that his cousin might wish to be alone with Lord Ulverston, engaged himself to keep the Dowager tolerably well amused with a few rubbers of piquet. This good-natured scheme for the Earl’s relief was rendered abortive, however, by her having previously extorted a promise from the Viscount to join her presently for a game of whist. This was kept up for some time after the appearance of the tea-table, the Dowager declaring that she scarcely knew how to tear herself away from the cards. “Twenty minutes to eleven!” she said, consulting the clock on the mantelshelf. “I shall be worn-out with dissipation. In general, you must know, I do not care to play after ten o’clock: it does not suit me; but this evening I have so much enjoyed the rubbers that I am not conscious of the hour. You play a very creditable game, Ulverston. I am no flatterer, so you may believe me when I say that I have been very well entertained. My dear father was a notable cardplayer, and I believe I have inherited his aptitude. Dear me, it will be wonderful if I am asleep before midnight! I shall not wait for Miss Morville to return, for if they are engaged in dancing, or speculation, at Whissenhurst, you know, there is no saying when she and Martin will come back. We will go to prayers immediately.”

Before this programme could be enforced on the company, the door opened to admit the two absentees. Their early return was explained, composedly by Miss Morville, and with great discontent by Martin. They had arrived at Whissenhurst to find Sir Thomas indisposed; and although his lady apprehended no cause for serious anxiety, he had gone to bed with a sore throat and a feverish pulse, and she had sent a message to Dr. Malpas, desiring him to call at the Grange in the morning. Her fear was that Sir Thomas had contracted influenza; and in these circumstances Miss Morville had not thought it proper to remain after tea had been drunk.

“If only Marianne does not take it from him!” Martin exclaimed. “One would have thought he need not have chosen this moment of all others to be ill! He might have caught influenza last month, and welcome — and, to be sure, I don’t know why he could not have done so, when half the countryside was abed with it! But no! Nothing will do but for him to be ill just when we are to hold our ball! I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the Bolderwoods do not come! It is all of a piece!”

“Shabby fellow!” said Ulverston, looking amused. “But so it is always with these crusty old men! They delight in plaguing the rest of us!”

“Oh, well, as to that, I would not call him crusty! ”Martin owned.

“Ah, now you are being over-generous, I feel!”

“Sir Thomas is a very respectable man,” pronounced the Dowager. “We will send to enquire at Whissenhurst tomorrow, and I have no doubt that we shall receive a comfortable account of him. He would be very sorry not to be able to come to Stanyon, I daresay.”

“What,” demanded the Viscount, a little later, when Gervase had borne him away to the library on the entrance floor of the Castle, “is the peculiar virtue of Sir Thomas, which makes his presence indispensable to the success of your ball?”

Gervase laughed. “A daughter!”

“A daughter! Very well! I don’t need to ask, Is she beautiful?”

“Very beautiful, very engaging!”

“What a shocking thing it would be, then, for Sir Thomas to cry off! I shall certainly remain with you for a long visit, Ger!”

“Nothing could please me more, but take care you don’t tread upon Martin’s corns!”

“How can you, after watching my conciliatory manners this night, think such an event possible? What is the matter with that halfling?”

“Indulgence!”

The Viscount stretched out his hand for the glass of wine Gervase had poured for him. “I see. And is he in love with Sir Thomas’s daughter?”

“Calf-love. He is ready to murder me for — ” Gervase stopped, his hand arrested in the act of pouring a second glass of wine. “For flirting with her,” he ended lightly.

The Viscount’s countenance was cherubic, but his eyes held a good deal of shrewdness. He said: “I perceive, of course, that he is ready to murder you, my Tulip. Tell me about the damaged bridge!”

“Oh, so you heard that, did you? I had thought you absorbed in the attractions of the Steyne!”

“Very sharp ears, dear boy!” apologized the Viscount.

“There is nothing to tell. The storm last night cracked one of the supports to a wooden bridge thrown over a stream here, and Martin neglected to warn me of it. He is jealous of me, you see, and I think he felt it would do me good to be ducked in muddy water.”

“But what a delightful young man!” commented the Viscount. “ Were you ducked?”

“No, my cousin was with me, and had some apprehension that the bridge might not be safe. In justice to Martin, he had already given instructions that the bridge should be barred. A schoolboy trick: no more.”

“Your cousin gave him a fine dressing for it: I heard him,” said Ulverston, sipping his wine.

“Did he? A pity! It was not worth making a noise about it.”

“Well, he seemed to think there was more to it than a schoolboy’s trick. Is there?”

“Of course there is not! Now, Lucy, what’s all this?”

“Beg pardon! It’s these ancestral walls of yours,” explained the Viscount. “Too dashed mediaeval, dear boy! They put the oddest notions into my head!”

Chapter 8

It was Martin who offered to be the bearer, on the following morning, of polite messages of condolence from his mother to Lady Bolderwood. He returned to Stanyon with no very encouraging tidings. Dr. Malpas had given it as his opinion that Sir Thomas’s disorder was indeed the influenza, and since Sir Thomas was of a bronchial habit he had strictly forbidden him to leave his bed for several days, much less his house. Marianne did not despair, however, of being able to attend the ball, for her Mama had promised that she would not scruple, unless Sir Thomas should become very much worse, to leave old Nurse in charge of the sick-room while she chaperoned her daughter to Stanyon.

But the following morning brought a servant from Whissenhurst to Stanyon, with a letter for the Dowager from Marianne. It was a primly-worded little note, but a blister on the sheet betrayed that tears had been shed over it. The writer regretted that, owing to the sudden indisposition of her Mama, it would be out of her power to come to Stanyon on the following evening. In fact, Lady Bolderwood had fallen a victim to the influenza.

The Dowager, in announcing these tidings, said that it was very shocking; but it was plain that she considered the Bolderwoods more to be commiserated than the Stanyon party. They would no doubt soon recover from the influenza, but they would have missed being amongst the guests at Stanyon, which she thought a privation not so readily to be recovered from. “How sorry they will be!” she said. “They would have liked it excessively.”

“It is the most curst thing!” Martin cried. “It ruins everything!”

“Yes, indeed, my dear, I am extremely vexed,” agreed the Dowager. “We shall now have two more gentlemen than ladies, and I daresay it will be quite uncomfortable. I warned your brother how it would be.”

It was not to be expected that this point of view would be much appreciated by either of her sons. Each felt that if Marianne were not to grace it the ball might as well be cancelled. Nothing but languor and insipidity could now lie before them.

“I wonder,” said Miss Morville, after glancing from Martin’s face to St. Erth’s, “if the difficulty might not perhaps be overcome?”

“I am sure, my dear Drusilla, I do not know whom we could prevail upon to come to the ball at such short notice,” replied the Dowager. “No doubt the Dearhams would accept an invitation with alacrity, and bless themselves for their good fortune, but I consider them pushing and vulgar, and if St. Erth expects me to entertain them I must say at once that it is out of the question that I should do so.”

“I have not the slightest desire to invite the Dearhams, whoever they may be,” said the Earl, rather impatiently.

“I should think not indeed!” Martin said. “The Dearhams in place of Miss Bolderwood! That would be coming it a little too strong, ma’am! Nobody cares if there are too many men: the thing is that if Marianne doesn’t come I for one would rather we postponed the ball!”

Miss Morville made herself heard again, speaking with a little diffidence, but with all her usual good sense. “I was going to suggest, ma’am, that, if you should not dislike it, Marianne might be invited to stay at Stanyon for a day or two, while her parents are confined to their beds. It must be sad work for her at Whissenhurst with no one to bear her company all day. You may depend upon it she is not even permitted the comfort of being able to attend to her Mama. They take such care of her, you know, that I am very sure she is not allowed to enter the sick-room.”

“By Jupiter, the very thing!” Martin exclaimed, his face lighting up.

“Miss Morville, you are an excellent creature!” Gervase said, smiling gratefully at her. “I don’t know where we should be without your sage counsel!”

The Dowager naturally saw a great many objections to a scheme not of her own devising, but after she had stated these several times, and had been talked to soothingly by Miss Morville and vehemently by her son, she began to think that it might not be so very bad after all. The Earl having the wisdom not to put forward any solicitations of his own, it was not long before she perceived a number of advantages to the plan. Martin would have the opportunity to enjoy Marianne’s society, Drusilla would have the benefit of her companionship, and the Bolderwoods would doubtless think themselves very much obliged to their kind neighbour. Such benevolent reflections put her ladyship into good-humour, and she needed little persuasion to induce her to say that she would drive to Whissenhurst that very day, and bring Marianne back with her.

It then became necessary to discuss exhaustively the rival merits of her ladyship’s chaise and her landaulet as a means of conveyance. From this debate the gentlemen withdrew in good order; and the Dowager, having weighed the chances of rain against the certainty of one of the passengers being obliged to sit forward, if she went to Whissenhurst in her chaise (“For there will be the maid to be conveyed, you know, and I should not care to go without you to bear me company, my dear Drusilla!”), decided in favour of the landaulet. Martin then very nobly offered to escort the ladies on their perilous journey, riding beside the carriage; and all that remained to be done was to decide whether the Dowager should wrap herself in her sables, or in her ermine stole. Even this ticklish point was settled; and midway through the afternoon the party was ready to set out, the only delay being caused by the Dowager’s last-minute decision to carry a genteel basket of fruit from the succession-houses to the sufferers. “One would not wish to be backward in any attention,” she explained. “To be sure, we have very little fruit at this period of the year, but I daresay St. Erth will not miss one each of his peaches and apricots and nectarines. I have directed Calne to fill up the basket with some of our apples, which I daresay Lady Bolderwood will be very glad to have, for the Stanyon apples, you know, are particularly good.”

Miss Morville encouraging her to suppose that St. Erth would be only too happy to sacrifice his fruit to the Bolderwoods, she was then ready to depart. The two ladies took their seats in the landaulet; a footman tenderly laid a rug about their knees; the basket of fruit was disposed upon the forward seat; Martin swung himself into the saddle of his good-looking bay hack; and the cavalcade set forth.

The way was beguiled by the Dowager in extolling her vicarious generosity in giving away her stepson’s fruit, in calling upon Miss Morville to admire her son’s admirable appearance on horseback, and in discovering that the bulbs in the various gardens which they passed on the road were not as far forward as those at Stanyon. They arrived at Whissenhurst in good time, without having been obliged to rely upon Martin’s gallantry to rescue them from footpads or highwaymen, and were received there by Marianne, who came running out of the house at sight of the landaulet, and expressed her sense of obligation for the condescension shown her in such warm terms as served to convince her ladyship that she was a very pretty-behaved young woman, worthy to match with her son. A brief explanation of her purpose in coming to Whissenhurst Grange was enough to throw Marianne into ecstasies. It was as Miss Morville had supposed: solicitude for her well-being had compelled Lady Bolderwood to forbide her most strictly to enter either sick-room. She had nothing to do but to regret the misfortune which prevented her from gracing the Stanyon ball.

The only difficulty was, how to obtain Lady Bolderwood’s consent to so delightful a scheme? Nurse was so cross she would be of no assistance: Marianne did not know what was to be done. Happily, Miss Morville was unafraid of the dangers attaching to sick-rooms, and she alighted from the landaulet with the express purpose of visiting Lady Bolderwood. The Dowager then permitted Marianne to escort her to the shrubbery, which she had the happiness of discovering to be not so extensive as that at Stanyon; and in a little while Miss Morville rejoined her with the welcome intelligence that Lady Bolderwood was most grateful to her for her kind thought, and would be pleased to allow her daughter to sojourn at Stanyon while she was confined to her chamber.

This was not strictly accurate. It did not quite suit Lady Bolderwood’s nice sense of propriety that Marianne should make her first appearance at a formal ball unattended by herself, but against the decree of her husband she was powerless to resist. He could perceive nothing in the invitation that was not agreeable. They might entrust their treasure to Lady St. Erth’s care with quiet minds; and how shocking a thing it would be to deny her this pleasure from some nonsensical scruple! He did not like to think of her moping about the house in solitude: he would be happy to know that she was being so well entertained, and in such unexceptionable hands. To find herself amongst a company of exalted persons would put her into excellent training for her coming London Season: he could not imagine what his Maria could find amiss in such a scheme. Lady Bolderwood acquiesced, therefore, her maternal agitation finding its only expression in the urgent messages which she charged Nurse to deliver to Marianne. These ranged from reminders of the conduct to be expected of debutantes, to the sum of money it would be proper to bestow upon the maidservant who waited on her, and the ornaments which she should wear with her ball-dress. Marianne’s maid, overjoyed at such an enlargement to her horizon, began to pack a number of trunks and band-boxes, the only alloy to her delight being the gloomily expressed conviction of Sir Thomas’s second footman that her pleasure had its root in the expectation of receiving the addresses of all the libertines employed at the Castle.

Marianne’s own happiness knew no other bounds than regret that her Mama could not make one of the party. Had she been permitted to do so, she would have rendered her parents’ malady still more hideous by smoothing their pillows, coaxing them to swallow bowls of gruel, and begging them to tell her, just as they were dropping into sleep, if there was anything she could do for them to make them more comfortable; but this solace had been denied her, so that she could not believe herself to be necessary to them. Her Papa bade her go to Stanyon and enjoy herself; her Mama, endorsing this command, only added a warning that she should conduct herself modestly; and as she had not the smallest inclination to go beyond the bounds of propriety she had nothing to do but to thank Lady St. Erth again and again for her exceeding kindness, and to prepare for several days of unsullied amusement. Her transports led her to embrace the Dowager, an impulsive action which, though it startled that lady, by ,no means displeased her. “A very good-hearted girl,” she told Miss Morville, when Marianne had run away to put on her hat and her pelisse. “I am glad that I had the happy notion of inviting her to stay at Stanyon.”

Miss Morville assented to it with great calmness. She did not feel it incumbent upon her to disclose to the Dowager the anxious qualms with which Lady Bolderwood parted from her daughter; but the truth was that the invitation was by no means welcome to Lady Bolderwood. While agreeing with Sir Thomas that her indisposition condemned Marianne to several days of solitary boredom, she still could not like her going alone to such a party as was contemplated at Stanyon. Sir Thomas said that their little puss could be trusted to keep the line; she could place no such dependence on the discretion of an eighteen-year-old girl, nor had she much faith in the Dowager’s capabilities as a chaperon. “Lady St. Erth,” she said, “is not the woman I should choose to entrust Marianne to!”

Miss Morville said that she would be at Stanyon, and would take care of Marianne.

“My dear,” said Lady Bolderwood, pressing her hand, “if it were not for that circumstance I could not bring myself to consent to such an arrangement! I should not say it, but I have no great liking for Lady St. Erth! Then, too, it has to be remembered that Marianne is an heiress, and if there is one thing above all others which I do not wish, it is to see her exposed to every gazetted fortune-hunter in England! She is too innocent to detect mere flattery; and even were Lady St. Erth the best-natured woman alive, which I do not scruple to assert she is not,it would be unreasonable to expect her to guard a young girl as her own mother would!”

Miss Morville, who had written all the invitations for the Dowager, said that she did not think that Marianne would encounter any fortune-hunters at Stanyon. She added that the ball would be quite a small one, and that the guests, for the most part, were already known to Lady Bolderwood. With this assurance the anxious mother had to be content. She sent a loving message of farewell to Marianne; and Marianne, who anticipated no attacks, either upon her expectations or upon her virtue, danced out to the landaulet, with her eyes and her cheeks aglow with happiness. She looked so pretty, in a swansdown-trimmed bonnet and pelisse, that Martin caught his breath at sight of her.

So, too, a little later, did Lord Ulverston.

After his first rapture at the thought of having Marianne to stay at Stanyon was abated a little, it had occurred to Martin that the visit would afford his half-brother many undesirable opportunities for flirtation. It had not occurred to him that he might find a rival in Lord Ulverston, for although his lordship certainly drove a magnificent team of horses, wore the coveted insignia of the Whip Club, and showed himself in all respects a man of fashion, he was not handsome, and his figure, seen beside any one of the three Frants, was not imposing. Martin, who stood over six foot in his bare feet, thought of him as a little on the squat. He was, in fact, of medium height and compact build; and if his features were not classical his smile was engaging, and his address considerable. It almost deserted him at the dazzling sight which met his eyes, but he made a quick recover, and sprang forward to hand Marianne out of the carriage before Martin had dismounted, and long before the Dowager had performed the proper introductions.

Since the dinner-hour at Stanyon was at half-past six, Miss Morville lost no time in escorting Marianne to her bedchamber, a pleasant room next to her own, with a modern, barred grate, and a comfortable tent-bed. Marianne, looking about her at the flowered wallpaper, and all the evidences of up-to-date taste, seemed a little disappointed, and confided that she had expected to find herself in a panelled room, with a four-poster bed, and a powder-closet.

“Well, it could be arranged for you to sleep in one of the panelled rooms,” said Miss Morville. “Only it will set you at a little distance from me, and I had thought you would prefer to be near me.”

Marianne assured her that she would not change her room for the world. “I thought all the rooms were panelled!” she explained. “Is not the Castle of vast antiquity?”

“Oh, not this part of it!” said Miss Morville. “I think it was built at the time of Charles II. I fancy that not much of the original Castle still remains. If you are interested in antiquities, you should ask Theo Frant to take you over the whole building: he knows all about it.”

“Is it haunted?” breathed Marianne, in delightful trepidation.

“Oh, no, nothing of that sort!” Miss Morville said reassuringly. She then perceived that she had given the wrong answer, and added: “At least, it may be, but I am not at all fanciful, you know, and I daresay I might not be conscious of the supernatural.”

“Oh, but, Drusilla, if a spectre without a head were to walk the corridors, or a female form in gray draperies, surely you would be conscious of it!” cried Marianne, much shocked.

“If I saw a female form in gray draperies I should take it for Lady St. Erth,” said Miss Morville apologetically. “She has a gray dressing-gown, you see. However, a headless spectre would certainly surprise me very much. Indeed, it would very likely give me a distaste for the Castle, so I hope I never shall see such an apparition.”

“Give you a distaste for the Castle! Oh no, how can you be so unromantic?” protested her youthful friend.

“To own the truth,” replied Miss Morville candidly, “I can perceive nothing romantic in a headless spectre. I should think it a very disagreeable sight, and if I did fancy I saw such a thing I should take one of Dr. James’s powders immediately! ”

Marianne was obliged to laugh; but she shook her head as well, and was persuaded that her friend could not be serious.

Miss Morville then went to her own room, to change her dress, promising to discover from Theo if they might reasonably expect to see a horrid apparition in any part of the Castle. She returned presently to escort Marianne to the Long Drawing-room, and, finding her charmingly attired in sprigged muslin, strongly recommended her to wrap a shawl round her shoulders. Though the Castle might lack a ghost, she said, it was well-provided with draughts.

“Provoking creature!” Marianne pouted. “You are determined to be prosaic, but I shan’t attend to you!”

They found the rest of the party already assembled in the Long Drawing-room, gathered about a noble fire. The Earl came forward to draw the young ladies into the circle, and Marianne, with a droll look, complained of Drusilla’s insensibility. “But she says that I must ask you,Mr. Frant, for the history of Stanyon, and you will tell it all to me — all about the secret dungeons, and the oubliette, and the ghost!”

Theo smiled, but replied ruefully that he could offer her neither ghost nor oubliette. “And I hardly dare to tell you that the dungeons were converted many years ago into wine cellars!” he confessed. “As for ghosts, I never heard of one here, did you, Gervase?”

“None beyond the shade that flits across the Fountain Court, weeping, and wringing its hands,” the Earl replied, with a composed countenance.

Marianne clasped her own hands together, and fixed her eyes on his face. “Oh, no! Do you mean it? And is that the only ghost? Does it not enter the Castle?”

“I have never known it to do so,” he said truthfully. “Of course, we have not put you in the Haunted Room — that would never do! The noise of clanking chains would make it impossible for you to sleep, and the groans, you know, are dreadful to hear. You will not be disturbed by anything of that nature, I hope. And if you should happen to hear the sound of a coach-and-four under your window at midnight pay no heed!”

“For shame, Gervase!” exclaimed Theo, laughing, as Marianne gave an involuntary shudder.”

“What is that you are saying, St. Erth?” called the Dowager, breaking off her conversation with Ulverston. “You are talking a great deal of nonsense! If any such thing were to happen I would be excessively displeased, for Calne has orders to lock the gates every night.”

“Ah, ma’am, but what can locked gates avail against a phantom?”

“Phantom! Let me assure you that we have nothing of that sort at Stanyon! I should not countenance it; I do not approve of the supernatural.”

Her disapproval was without its effect, the gentlemen continuing to tease Marianne with accounts of spectres, and Martin achieving a decided success with a very horrid monkish apparition, which, when it raised its head, was seen to have only a skull under its cowl. “It is known as the Black Monk of Stanyon,” he informed Marianne. “It — it appears only to the head of the house, and then as a death-warning!”

She turned her eyes involuntarily towards Gervase. “Oh, no!” she said imploringly, hardly knowing whether to be horrified or diverted. “You are not serious!”

“Hush!” he said, in an earnest tone. “Martin should not have disclosed to you the Secret of Stanyon: we never speak of it! It is a very dreadful sight.”

“Well, I don’t know how you should know that,”remarked Miss Morville, a good deal amused. “You cannot have seen it, after all!”

“My dear Miss Morville, what makes you think so?”

“You are not dead!” she pointed out.

“Not yet! ”struck in Ulverston, in sepulchral accents. “We cannot tell, however, when we may find him stiff in his bed, his fingers still clutching the bell-rope, and an expression on his face of the greatest terror!”

“No, no! Oh, you are roasting me! I do not believe it!” Marianne said faintly.

Her cheeks were quite blanched, and she could not resist the impulse to look over her shoulder. The Earl judged it to be time to have done, and to assure her that the Black Monk existed only in Martin’s imagination. The Dowager set Lord Ulverston right on a little misapprehension, telling him that the bell-rope in the Earl’s bedchamber hung beside the fireplace, and was out of reach of the bed. This was an inconvenience which she continued to deplore until dinner was announced; and as Miss Morville, rallied on her lack of sensibility, said that she could not be terrified by tales of skeletons, since these could only be produced by human contrivance, Marianne’s alarms were soon sufficiently dispelled to enable her to eat her dinner with a good appetite, and not to suppose that if she glanced behind her at the footman about to present a syllabub to her she would discover him to be a fleshless monk.

The Dowager’s benevolence had not led her to make any plans for the entertainment of her young guest, but when she discovered that the party numbered eight persons, she directed that a second card-table should be set up, so that those who did not play whist with her might enjoy a rubber of Casino. “Mr. Clowne, and my nephew, Mr. Theo Frant, will make up our table,” she informed Lord Ulverston. “You, I know, will prefer to play whist!”

The grace with which the Viscount accepted this decree was only equalled by the dexterity with which he convinced her ladyship that she would be better amused by a game of speculation. To her objection that she had never played the game, he responded that it would afford him delight to teach her. He seated himself on her right hand; and not even Martin, whose jealous disposition made him at all times suspicious, could decide whether it was by chance, or deep stratagem, that Marianne was placed on his other side. To her he largely devoted himself, cheating himself to enable her to win fish, and keep her in a ripple of laughter with his inconsequent chatter. Fortunately for the Dowager, Mr. Clowne, who sat on her left, considered that it behoved him to direct her bids; and since she was acquisitive by nature it was not long before she grasped the principles of the game, and was making some pretty shrewd bids on her own account.

Seldom had an evening at Stanyon passed more merrily. No one noticed the appearance of the tea-tray, and it was very nearly midnight before the party broke up.

On the following morning, an exercise in manoeuvres was won by the Earl, not, as his indignant friend told him, so much by superior strategy as by inner knowledge. The Viscount, suggesting that a riding-party should be formed, was countered by the Earl, who said that there was no horse in the stables accustomed to carrying a lady, and followed up this advantage by offering to let Miss Bolderwood drive his famous grays. Martin, only deterred from pressing the claims of his Troubadour as a safe lady’s hack by the recollection that the only lady’s saddle at Stanyon was on an antiquated design, quite unsuitable for Marianne’s use, owned himself to be very much obliged to Miss Morville, who ventured to suggest that her own riding-horse could easily be brought to Stanyon from Gilbourne House for Miss Bolderwood’s use.

It was of no avail. “Your horse shall of course be fetched, ma’am,” said the Earl, “but it is you who must ride him! I know Miss Bolderwood too well to indulge myself with the thought that she will set forth on any expedition while you remain at home!”

It was enough. Marianne declared that nothing would induce her to do so at the expense of her friend, and Miss Morville, who would have been happier to have attended to all the last-minute preparations for the evening’s ball, was obliged to form one of the party bound for Whissenhurst, to enquire after the progress of the invalids there.

The expedition, after a vain attempt to persuade Theo into joining it, consisted of Marianne and the Earl, in the curricle, accompanied by Miss Morville, Lord Ulverston, and Martin, upon horseback. Martin’s infatuation led him to stay as close to the curricle as the narrowness of the lanes permitted, but Lord Ulverston’s manners were too well-bred to allow of his following this example. He devoted himself to Miss Morville, and, through the accident of his having once read one of her Mania’s excellent novels when he was confined to bed with a bad chill and could find nothing else to his hand, contrived to maintain an animated conversation with her all the way to Whissenhurst.

Comfortable tidings having been received from old Nurse, every qualm was assuaged in Marianne’s breast. She need not think herself a renegade; she could be happy in the knowledge that her parents were much amended, and wished her well.

“You show great aptitude as a whip, Miss Bolderwood,” the Viscount told her, upon their leaving Whissenhurst Grange. “I have been observing you closely, and have derived no inconsiderable pleasure from the sight. But St. Erth is not the man to teach you those niceties which you should know! Ger, dear boy, take my horse, and relinquish your place beside Miss Bolderwood to me! I will show her how to feather-edge a corner.”

“Yes, pray do!” Marianne said eagerly. “I collect that you are a member of the Four-Horse Club, and only think how I shall astonish Papa when I tell him that I have had a lesson from one of the first whips in the country!”

“My trick, I fancy, Ger!” murmured the Viscount, giving his bridle into St. Erth’s hand.

“The treachery of one’s friends affords food for much melancholy reflection,” retorted St. Erth. “I warn you, I shall come about, and my revenge may well terrify you!”

“ I would not have yielded so tamely!” muttered Martin, as the Viscount mounted lightly into the curricle.

“I can believe it, but I think myself very well-placed,” replied his brother, swinging himself into the saddle. “That is a nice hack of yours, Miss Morville, and I fancy you have light hands. Do you hunt at all?”

She could not but be pleased with the good-breeding which not only kept him at her side, but prevented his emulating Martin’s example in trying to ride as close to the curricle as possible. He continued to converse with her like a man satisfied with his company; and upon finding an open farm gate, suggested that they should leave the lane for the refreshment of a canter through the fields. The crops, which were so far forward that year as to have put an early end to the hunting season, made it necessary for them to skirt the fields rather than to cross them, but they enjoyed an agreeable ride, and reached Stanyon some time before the rest of their party. The Earl hoped that the exertion would not have made Miss Morville too tired to stand up for every dance that evening, a civility which amused her, since she meant to spend the afternoon, not, as he seemed to suppose, in recruiting her energies for the night’s festivity, but in attending to all the details attaching to the entertainment of a large number of guests with which her hostess was a great deal too indolent to concern herself. Neither she nor the late Earl had been fond of entertaining, and since the marriage of their daughter no ball had been held at Stanyon. The housekeeper and the steward were thrown into a fluster by so rare an event, and although they enjoyed all the consequence of being called upon to provide for the accommodation of the ducal party from Belvoir, besides catering for the refreshment of some twenty persons at dinner, and forty more at supper, they were unaccustomed to such grand doings, and depended on Miss Morville, in default of their mistress, to advise on the number of rout-cakes it would be proper to bake; the propriety of serving tea and coffee at supper, as well as lemonade and champagne; and what apartments ought to be allotted to the several guests who were to spend the night at Stanyon. Then there were the musicians to be thought of: where they should be lodged, and whose duty it was to wait upon them; the arrangement of the flowers to superintend; the number of card-tables to be set up in the Italian Saloon to be decided on; and sufficient chairs to be disposed about the ballroom for those either desirous of watching the dancing, or unfortunate enough to have no partners.

The Earl, finding Miss Morville in conference with Abney, was a little conscience-stricken. “My dear ma’am, had I dreamed that all the labour of the ball was to fall upon you I would not have suggested we should give a ball at all! I should think you must bear me a considerable grudge!”

“No, indeed! I am happy to be of service, and this sort of contriving, you know, is exactly what I like.”

“You do it very well,” he said, looking about him at the flowers, and at the clean packs of cards laid ready on the several tables. “You remember all the details which I am very sure I must have forgotten.”

“Very likely you might,” she agreed. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must leave you. Lady St. Erth received an express from your sister this morning, informing her that she and Lord Grampound would be pleased to come to the party, and I find she has not told Mrs. Marple of it. I daresay her ladyship would wish to be given her former apartments, and we had arranged, you know, to put the Ashbournes in them.”

“Louisa coming!” he exclaimed. “Good God, what folly! Who can have invited her to undertake a journey of eighty miles for a ball of no particular consequence?”

“I don’t think anyone invited her,” replied Miss Morville, “but I expect Lady St. Erth may have mentioned that a ball was to be held here. That, if you will not mind my saying so, would be enough to bring her.”

“More than enough! She is the most tiresome, inquisitive woman of my acquaintance, I believe!”

“Her understanding is not powerful,” said Miss Morville, “nor are her manners such as must universally please, but she is not,I think, ill-natured, and although she may regret your existence, I fancy she does not dislike you, or even hold you to blame for being older than her brother.”

“I am very much obliged to her! This is something indeed!” he said sardonically.

She smiled, but would say no more; and upon the housekeeper’s looking into the room, went away to confer with her on the necessary alteration in the bedchambers.

Chapter 9

None of the guests was expected to arrive at the Castle before five o’clock, at which hour it was thought that those who had been invited to stay the night at Stanyon might be looked for; but at a little after three Miss Morville, who happened to be in one of the saloons which overlooked the main entrance-drive, saw to her dismay that two large travelling-coaches were drawing up below the terrace. A stockily-built gentleman, just dismounted from his horse, chanced to look round, and Miss Morville recognized, with a sinking heart, the commonplace features of Lord Grampound. The servants were letting down the steps of the two coaches, and in another instant Miss Morville’s worst fears were realized: Lord and Lady Grampound had brought their interesting offspring with them to Stanyon.

The reason was soon explained. As soon as all the bustle of greeting the visitors had abated, Lady Grampound, a young woman in her twenty-sixth year who already showed promise of closely resembling her mother, disclosed that the entire party was on its way to visit old Lady Grampound in Derbyshire. “She has been wanting for ever to see the children, you know, Mama, and since I was determined to come to your ball, it seemed an excellent scheme to bring them, for it is all on our way, or very little out of it, I am sure.”

The Dowager was perfectly ready to accept her daughter’s geography, nor could she conceive that two dear little boys of four and three years old could be the smallest trouble to her. In this she spoke nothing but the truth, for she made no attempt to arrange for their accommodation, and when they became too noisy for her comfort their nurses removed them from her vicinity. Their mother said complacently that she did not know when she had seen them in such high spirits. “It is coming to Stanyon which has occasioned it. I am sure if Harry has asked me once when we are to set forward on the journey he has asked me a hundred times. I knew St. Erth would be happy to see them: I told Grampound we need not scruple to bring them with us.”

The Earl, admirably concealing his transports, asked his half-sister how long they were to have the pleasure of entertaining her at Stanyon. She replied regretfully that she would be obliged to continue her journey upon the following day. Everyone but the Dowager began to look more cheerful, but a damper was cast on the spirits of one of the company when her ladyship added: “It is a vast pity, to be sure, and poor little Harry screamed for an hour at least when I told him we should not remain at Stanyon above a night. Dear little fellow! he has never forgot his Uncle Martin’s kindness in taking him up before him on his horse, and riding with him round the Park, and now Johnny is wild for the treat too! However, I assured them they should have the indulgence of a ride with their uncle tomorrow morning, and, indeed, I do not know how I should contrive to tear them away unless this was granted them!”

Their fond Uncle Martin looked anything but gratified, but managed to control his feelings until he found himself out of earshot of his sister. He then declared that if Louisa imagined that he meant to waste his time in amusing her children she would find herself very much mistaken.

“Good God, Martin, are you mad?” demanded Gervase. “You will take those brats for rides as soon as they have swallowed their breakfasts, if Theo and I have to tie you to the saddle! Did you not hear Louisa say that she could not tear them from us until they had been granted this indulgence?”

Martin grinned, but said with considerable aplomb that he thought the boys would prefer to ride upon Cloud’s back.

“Nothing,” said Gervase instantly, “would afford me greater delight than to set them up before me on Cloud, but the melancholy truth is that though he is in general perfectly docile, he cannot abide the sight of small boys. I do not know how it is, but — ”

“No, nor anyone else!” interrupted Martin indignantly. “You are the most complete hand!”

“I am, and I give you fair warning that you will leave Stanyon tomorrow, never to return, unless you oblige your nephews in this small matter!”

An expression of deep cunning entered Martin’s eyes; he said in a conspiratorial tone: “I say, Gervase, could we not prevail upon Theo — ?”

“The very thing!” exclaimed Gervase. “For anything we know, he dotes upon young children!”

“Who does?” enquired the subject of this plot, entering the room in time to overhear this observation. He laughed, when the stratagem was disclosed to him, and said that nothing but their kind Uncle Martin would satisfy the boys. “And since Martin was so foolish as to set up such a precedent it is only right that he should bear the consequences,” he added. “Do either of you know where Drusilla is to be found? Some arrangements must be made for the boys’ supper, and I believe she is the best person to employ in approaching the head-cook.”

“Unfortunate Drusilla!” commented the Earl. “What havoc are my little nephews creating now? When I left her ladyship’s dressing-room they had done nothing more than set fire to the hearthrug.”

“Have no fear! Miss Bolderwood has taken them to the Crimson Saloon, to play at spillikins!” said Theo.

This intelligence had the instant effect of sending the Earl and his brother off to participate in a sport for which each discovered in himself a forgotten, but strong, predilection.

Lady Grampound, meanwhile, was enjoying a tête-à-tête with her Mama, while her husband, himself a landowner, was wandering about the stables and the Home Farm, observing every improvement there since his last visit, and contrasting them all unfavourably with those on his own estate.

Lady Grampound’s object in coming to Stanyon was to meet Marianne rather than to dance at the ball; and since Marianne’s good-manners led her to say that she had never seen stouter or more intelligent children than Harry and John, and her sunny good-nature made it no hardship to her to play with them, her ladyship had no hesitation in declaring her to be a delightful girl, and one to whom she would be happy to see her brother married.

“It is such a shocking thing that poor Martin should be cut out of the succession!” she said. “I was never more grieved than when I heard that Gervase had come through the engagement at Genappe without a scratch, for, you know, the Seventh were heavily engaged there, and one might have supposed — But it was not to be, and, to be sure, I wish him no harm, if only he were not older than Martin. Indeed, I am excessively attached to him, and I shall never forget that he sent dear little Johnny a most handsome christening-gift. But if poor Martin is to be cut out he must marry well, and I do believe Miss Bolderwood is the very girl for him. She seems quite unexceptionable, and they say, Mama, that Sir Thomas must be worth every penny of a hundred thousand pounds, and very likely more. The only thing I do not quite like is to find Ulverston visiting at Stanyon. To be sure, I never heard that he was hanging out for a wife, but now that his Papa has succeeded to the Earldom he must be desirous of seeing his son established, and there is no denying that Ulverston has considerable address. However, he is a man of easy fortune, so that to marry an heiress cannot be an object with him.” This observation caused the Dowager to suffer a qualm. It was but momentary. Her mind was not receptive of new ideas, nor could she suppose that there existed a young man more capable of engaging a maiden’s fancy than her own son. He was tall, handsome, and well-born; and such faults of temper as he showed she regarded in much the same light as her daughter looked on the disobedience of her two little boys: every defect was due to high spirits.

Not being concerned to any very great degree with anything beyond the bounds of her immediate family, Lady Grampound soon passed to topics of more interest to her, and in recounting to her parent little Harry’s progress in ciphering, Johnny’s tendency to bronchial colds, and her own difficulties in finding a second footman who combined smartness with respectability, comfortably whiled away the time until it became necessary for her to change her dress for the ball.

It had been decided by Lady Bolderwood that Marianne should wear her white satin ball-dress with the Russian bodice, and pearls as her only ornaments. Miss Morville, visiting her room to enquire if she had all she needed for the completion of her toilet, privately considered that her ladyship was a good deal to be pitied for being unable to see how lovely her daughter appeared in this festal raiment; but as it was not in her nature to go into raptures she merely admired the dress, reassured Marianne on the vexed question of her curls, which Betty had arranged with charming simplicity, à l’anglaise,and placed a prettily spangled gauze scarf about her shoulders, showing her to a nicety how to dispose its folds to the best advantage. She herself, having already enjoyed several London Seasons, was not obliged to wear white, a colour which had never showed her off to advantage, but was dressed in a crape slip of her favourite soft pink, worn under a figured lace robe. Her pearl necklet was more modest than Marianne’s, but she wore a pair of diamond drops in her ears, and carried an antique fan, and a pair of very long French gloves of a delicate shade of pink which instantly awoke Marianne’s envy. “They are pretty,” acknowledged Miss Morville. “My brother Jack was so obliging as to send them to me, when he was stationed near Paris last year, and I have never yet worn them.”

“Do you know,” confided Marianne, rather shyly, “I had thought that you did not care very much for such things?”

“On the contrary,” replied Miss Morville, “my besetting sin is a great inclination towards finery. Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — my figure is not good, and my complexion rather brown, so that it suits me best to dress simply, and never in such colours as make you, my dear Marianne, appear quite ravishing!”

Marianne blushed, and disclaimed, and marvelled silently that her friend could so calmly refer to her own lack of beauty.

Together, they traversed the several galleries and antechambers which lay between their apartments and the Long Drawing-room. Here they found many of the dinner-guests already assembled, those who were to spend the night at Stanyon having arrived some time previously, and being now gathered to await the appearance of those persons living in the immediate neighbourhood of Stanyon whom the Dowager had thought it proper to honour with an invitation to dinner. She herself, formidably attired in purple gros grain and velvet, and wearing the famous Frant diamonds, which comprised a tiara, necklet, and elaborate corsage, all of which would have been the better for cleaning, was assisting her daughter to bore the Duchess of Rutland with an account of the recent attack of measles suffered by Harry and Johnny. The Duchess was herself the mother of a young family, but only her strict training in the formal household of her Papa, the Earl of Carlisle, enabled her to support her part in this interchange with the appearance of complaisance. However, she was upborne by the reflection that her rank must. make it a certainty that St. Erth would take her in to dinner, and for him she had no hesitation in declaring that she had a strong tendre.

He was looking particularly handsome, in a dark coat made for him by the first tailor in town, and a most intricately tied cravat. His glowing locks, brushed into the Brutus style made fashionable by Mr. Brummell, shone like new-minted guineas in the light of the candles; and his stockings, like Miss Morville’s gloves, had been bought in Paris. So exactly were his coat and satin knee-breeches moulded to his figure that Martin was conscious of a sudden regret that he had not commissioned Weston to make his own evening-dress.

The entrance of the two young ladies was productive of a sensation in which Miss Morville realized, without rancour, that she had no part. Lord Ulverston was heard to mutter, “By Jupiter!” by the high-born damsel to whom he had been talking; and the Duchess, having rapidly assimilated Miss Bolderwood’s charms, demanded of her hostess in an urgent whisper to be told the name of the newest Beauty.

But although Marianne might be first in beauty, she was not first in consequence, and not all the Dowager’s concern for her son’s success with an heiress could blind her to the impropriety of his leading a mere baronet’s daughter in to dinner when other, and more important, ladies were present. To Mr. Warboys was the task of partnering Marianne allotted, and if his intellect was not of a powerful order at least he contrived to keep her very well-entertained throughout the meal. Lord Grampound sat upon her other side, and since his attention was pretty well divided between his other neighbour, a matron with an inexhaustible flow of smalltalk, and his dinner, which he pronounced to be uncommonly good, Marianne’s notice was not often claimed by him. At the head of the table, the Earl and her Grace of Rutland were seen to be entertaining one another creditably; rather lower down, Martin did his duty by a chatty Countess; and in the centre of the table, Miss Morville and Theo Frant conversed together with all the ease and comfort of old friends.

Hardly had the gentlemen joined the ladies after dinner than the rest of the guests began to arrive, and in a very short space of time the musicians had struck up for the first country-dance. Here again, propriety forbade either the Earl or his brother to lead Miss Bolderwood to the head of the set that was forming. To the Duchess must belong the honour of opening the ball; and it was Lord Ulverston who had the good fortune to secure Marianne’s hand for the first two dances. Not all Martin’s manoeuvring served even to place him beside Marianne in the set, a circumstance which Miss Morville, who had that happiness, considered to be merciful dispensation of providence. The most dispassionate observer must have been obliged to own that between the lively Viscount and Marianne there already flourished an excellent understanding; and no one at all acquainted with Martin could have placed the least dependence on his comporting himself with composure under the trial of seeing her responding so artlessly to Lord Ulverston’s advances.

Her hand was presently claimed by Gervase for the first quadrille. She performed her part correctly, but since she had never danced it but under the guidance of her instructor, she was nervous of making some mistake in its various figures, and had little leisure for attending to the Earl’s attempts to amuse her. He, as was to be expected of an officer under the Duke of Wellington’s command, was an excellent dancer, performing all the most difficult steps with ease and grace. She exclaimed naively at the assurance with which he led her into the grande ronde; he told her that she wanted only practice to make her an unimpeachable exponent of the art: a compliment which emboldened her to attempt the pas d’été with more confidence than she might otherwise have felt.

But a severe set-back awaited the Earl. When the musicians, under his private instructions, struck up for a waltz, no persuasions could prevail upon Marianne to stand up to dance. Her Mama’s instructions had been explicit: she might, if solicited to do so, dance the quadrille, but on no account must she waltz. Neither the Earl nor Lord Ulverston could induce her to contravene this prohibition: to be seen to waltz before she had received the accolade of the approval of the hostesses of Almack’s must set upon any debutante the indelible stigma of being a fast girl. Lady Bolderwood had foreseen the danger, and had guarded against it: although some license might be permitted to a young lady making her appearance at a private ball, she was too shrewd not to know that there would be jealous matrons enough to report in influential circles that Miss Bolderwood was not quite the thing.

Marianne’s docility might disappoint her male admirers, but it did her no disservice in the eyes either of Lady St. Erth or of her ladyship’s acquaintance. She was held to be a very modest girl by at least three mothers of promising daughters; and the most delightful, unaffected girl possible by those ladies anxious to marry their younger sons creditably.

Since Miss Morville happened to be standing beside Marianne when the Earl begged for the honour of her hand in the waltz, good manners compelled him to turn next to her. She accepted the offer with her usual composure, curtseying slightly, and allowing him to lead her on to the floor. Here she surprised him by proving herself to be an experienced dancer, very light on her feet, and so well-acquainted with the various steps that she performed them as though by instinct, and was able to converse sensibly while she did so. Under no illusions as to the value of the compliment paid her by her host in asking her to stand up with him while many ladies of more consequence awaited that honour, she said seriously: “If only you had mentioned the matter to me, I could have told you that there was no possibility of Miss Bolderwood’s waltzing, my lord, and then, you know, you need not have commanded the musicians to strike up for one.”

“How do you know that I did so command them, ma’am?” he asked, smiling in spite of himself.

“Well, I did not, because Lady St. Erth does not like to see it danced; and I am very sure Martin did not, because he has never learnt the steps.”

“You are correct in your surmise,” he acknowledged. “And I am going to bespeak another waltz. You dance delightfully, Miss Morville!”

“I have had a great deal of practice,” she said. “I am very much obliged to you for the courtesy, but I believe you ought rather to invite Lady Firth to dance with you.”

“Miss Morville, you may manage the arrangements for the ball, but you shall not manage my conduct at it!” he told her. “I have already stood up with Lady Firth for the boulanger, and I consider myself now at liberty to please myself. I hope you don’t mean to refuse me the pleasure of another waltz with you!”

Martin, meanwhile, had joined the small group of young ladies whose mamas, like Lady Bolderwood, did not sanction the waltz. If he could have done it, he would have detached Marianne from the fair bevy, but his arrival was greeted with so much delight by a damsel, just emerged from the schoolroom, and whom he had known all his life, that civility obliged him to remain talking to her for several minutes. By the time another gentleman came up to claim her notice, Lord Ulverston, escaping from the clutches of Lady Grampound, was seated beside Marianne, entertaining her with a few of the military anecdotes so much frowned on by the Dowager; and although Martin might hover jealously over Marianne he could not lure her attention away from her more amusing partner. He had had the forethought to engage her for supper, but whatever solace this might have afforded him was banished by the chance which set Ulverston upon her other hand at the table. Besides the long table in the centre of the saloon, several smaller tables had been set up, and it was at one of these that the two couples were seated. Martin, who had adjured Abney to keep the table free for him, was very soon regretting what had seemed at the time to be a piece of good strategy. The two parties naturally merged into one, and it would have been idle to deny that Lord Ulverston was the life and soul of it. This was bad, and still worse was it to perceive, a little later, that his lordship had won Marianne’s hand for the second time that evening. Martin felt quite indignant with her for yielding to the solicitations of one whom he was fast beginning to think a confirmed rake; and had the opportunity offered he would have been much inclined to have told her that her Mama would by no means approve of her standing up twice with the same gentleman. The ball had become an insipid affair; he wondered that his partner in the set could have so little to say for herself; and decided that dancing was a stupid business after all.

When the next set was formed, he had the happiness of leading Marianne into it, but no sooner had they gone down the dance than she had the misfortune to let her train slip a little from her hand. Lord Grampound, an energetic if not an inspired performer, lost no time in setting his foot upon one of its delicate lace flounces, so that Marianne was obliged to leave the set to effect a makeshift repair. She assured Martin, who was ready to knock his brother-in-law down for his clumsiness, that a couple of pins would set all to rights, and he at once escorted her to one of the saloons leading from the ballroom. This happened to be empty, and Marianne, well-knowing that to go to her bedchamber and to summon Betty to attend her there would be the work not of a minute but of half an hour, was content to let Martin pin up her lace for her. This he did, with the pins her Mama had warned her to provide herself with for just such an accident. Only a few inches of the lace had been ripped away from the satin, and the task was soon accomplished. Martin rose to his feet, and Marianne thanked him, complimenting him on his deftness, and laughing at the incident. The exercise of dancing had heightened the colour in her cheeks; her eyes sparkled with innocent enjoyment; and she looked so lovely that Martin lost his head, and so far forgot himself as to blurt out a declaration of his passion for her, and to try to take her in his arms.

She was quite unprepared for such a sudden turn, and not a little frightened. Demure flirtations she could enjoy, but the watchful care of Lady Bolderwood had warded off any offers for her hand, and she knew not how to quench the desperate ardour which confronted her. She could only retreat before Martin, saying in a fluttered voice: “No, no! Oh, pray do not!”

It was perhaps not surprising that he should have followed her, and grasped the hands she put out to hold him off; and he would certainly have kissed her, in despite of her faint shriek, had not his sister entered the saloon at that moment, accompanied by their half-brother. He was recalled to a sense of his surroundings by hearing Gervase sharply utter his name, and he swung round, a tide of colour flooding his face, and in his eyes an expression of oddly-mingled shame and fury.

Marianne was quite as discomposed as he, and stood trembling, her face averted to hide the sudden rush of startled tears to her eyes. Lady Grampound’s exclamation of: “Good gracious, what’s all this, pray?” did nothing to soothe her agitation. She had no voice with which to speak even such few, disjointed words as rose to her lips; and it was with profound gratitude that she laid her shaking hand on the Earl’s arm. He had crossed the room, and was saying in his quiet way: “I came in search of you, for another set is forming, ma’am. I saw the sad accident which befell your gown, and I hope my brother has been of assistance in pinning up the lace.”

“Oh, yes! So kind!” she managed to say. “It is of no consequence — the tiniest rent!”

She went with him thankfully to the door, but here they were met by Lord Ulverston, who said, in a rallying tone: “Ger, you are a base fellow, and are trying to steal a march on me! Miss Bolderwood is promised to me for this dance! Unhand her, villain!”

He perceived as he spoke that she was suffering from some embarrassment. One swift glance round the room, if it did not put him in possession of the facts, at least informed him that Martin was in some way to blame for this; and with the ready address which sprang as much from good-nature as from good-breeding he continued to rattle on in his droll style, accusing his friend of treachery, and insisting that he would very likely call him out for it in the morning.

“No, no!” said Gervase, ably seconding his efforts. “ That would be a great breach of hospitality! If you can be so unmindful of your duty towards your host, I at least shall not forget my duty towards my guest!”

“Humdudgeon, Ger! Miss Bolderwood, do not be taken-in by these soft words! He played me just such a trick once in France, and was not for a moment at a loss to explain why he should not be punished for it! But, come! We shall find no places if we don’t make haste!”

The Earl relinquished her into his friend’s care, and she allowed herself to be led back into the ballroom. Gervase turned to look his brother up and down, and to say icily: “Have the goodness to preserve the appearance at least of a gentleman, Martin! These manners may do very well at a Covent Garden masquerade: they are out of place at Stanyon!”

“How dare you?” Martin ejaculated, starting forward a pace. “ You are not to be the arbiter of my conduct!”

“You are mistaken. I am the only arbiter of the conduct of those who live under my roof!”

“Yes! You would like to be rid of me, would you not? You are afraid you have no chance with Marianne while I — ”

“We will leave Miss Bolderwood’s name out of this. I will not suffer any guest of mine to be insulted, least of all a girl entrusted to our protection! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

Since Martin was, in fact, very much ashamed of himself, this scathing remark made him angrier than ever. His sister then further exacerbated his temper by pronouncing in a pontifical tone strongly reminiscent of her mother: “I am bound to say that St. Erth is perfectly in the right. Such behaviour, my dear brother, is not at all the thing. Grampound would be very much shocked.”

“Grampound may go to the devil, and take you and St. Erth with him!” said Martin furiously.

“Now, Martin, do not fly into one of your stupid puckers!” recommended her ladyship. “You had better beg Miss Bolderwood’s pardon. I shall tell her that you are a trifle foxed.”

“You will do no such thing! I want none of your curst meddling, Louisa, I thank you! I mean to marry Marianne!”

“Possibly,” said Gervase dryly, “but before you press attentions upon her which she appears to find unwelcome, you would be well-advised to obtain her father’s consent to your pretensions.”

“Very true,” agreed Lady Grampound. “It is no use to scowl, Martin, for St. Erth’s observation is excessively just. When Grampound offered for me, it was not until dear Papa had assured him that he should not dislike the match for me. Indeed, until Mama informed me of it I had not a notion that Grampound was fallen passionately in love with me, for he behaved with the greatest propriety towards me, so that I am sure I thought he cared more for his dinner than for me!”

She laughed heartily at this recollection, but the only effect it had upon her young brother was to make him eye her with acute dislike, and to grip his lips so firmly together that they seemed no more than a thin line drawn across his face.

“I am persuaded that Grampound did just as he ought,” said Gervase gravely, but with a twitching lip. “Enough has been said, I think: we had better go back into the ballroom.”

“Well, I have not said all I wish to!” Martin shot at him. “You may stop talking to me as though I were a damned rake, just trifling with Marianne! It’s no such thing, and if you think I mean to await your permission before I ask her to marry me, you will discover your mistake!”

He was interrupted by the entrance of Theo, who came in, looking startled, and considerably shocked. He quickly shut the door behind him, saying: “Gervase! Martin! For God’s sake — ! Your voices can be heard in the ballroom! What is it?”

“No concern of yours!” replied Martin.

“It is all Martin’s fault,” explained Lady Grampound. “He has been behaving very badly, and now he will not own it! But so it is always with him! And Mama so much encourages him that Grampound says it is no wonder — ”

Gervase intervened hastily: “Grampound is a very good sort of a man, Louisa, but I doubt whether Martin wants to be told of his sayings. Let Theo take you back to the ballroom! It will occasion too much remark if we all go together.”

“I think it is you who had better accompany Lady Grampound,” said Theo bluntly.

“Nonsense! Martin and I have a little rubbed one another, but we are not going to come to fisticuffs, I assure you! Louisa, oblige me by not mentioning what has occurred to anyone! There is not the least occasion for you to speak of it even to Grampound.”

“The person who should be told, is Mama,” said her ladyship, gathering up her train. “However, I shall not do so, for she will never make the smallest push to remonstrate with Martin, and so it has always been!”

With these sisterly words, she accepted her cousin’s escort into the ballroom, where she proceeded to regale him, without loss of time, with the whole history of the episode.

Left alone with his half-brother, Gervase said in a more friendly tone: “Well, that was all very unfortunate, but it will be forgotten! If I spoke too warmly, I beg your pardon, but to be trying to kiss against her will a girl in Miss Bolderwood’s circumstances is the outside of enough, as well you know!”

His sensibilities as much lacerated by Marianne’s attempt to repulse him as by the lash of his own conscience, Martin was in no mood to accept an amende. He said in a shaking voice: “Damn you, leave me alone!” and brushed past Gervase out of the saloon.

Chapter 10

It was not to be expected that Miss Bolderwood could compose herself for slumber that night until she had poured forth the agitating events of the evening into her friend’s ears. Lord Ulverston’s kindness and good-humour had done much to calm her disturbed nerves, but these had been shocked, and would not readily recover. Since her schoolroom days she had almost never found herself alone with a man other than her Papa, for even when the Earl taught her to drive his curricle his groom had always been perched up behind the carriage. The anxious care of her parents had wrapped her about; and although her disposition led her to flirt with her many admirers it had never occurred to her innocent mind that these tactics might lead them, on the first occasion when they found her unprotected, to take shocking advantage of her levity. Her spirits were quite borne down by the discovery; and she was much inclined to think herself a fast girl, with whom gentlemen thought it proper to take liberties.

Miss Morville, however, received her confidences with admirable calm and common-sense. While agreeing that it was no doubt disagreeable to be found in such an embarrassing situation, she maintained that it was no matter for wonder that Martin should have so far forgotten himself. “If you will be so pretty, Marianne, and flirt so dreadfully, what can you expect?”

“Oh, I was never so mortified! I had not the least notion he would try to do such a thing!”

“Well, he should not, of course, but he is very young, after all, and I daresay he is ashamed of it now,” said Miss Morville consolingly. “If I were you, I would not refine too much upon the incident!”

“How can you talk so? He behaved as though I were — as though I were the veriest drab! ”She saw that Miss Morville was looking amused, and added indignantly: “Drusilla, how can you be so insensible? You must have felt it as I do!”

“Perhaps I might,” acknowledged Miss Morville. “I don’t think I should, but the melancholy truth is that no one has ever shown the smallest desire to kiss me!”

“I envy you!” declared Marianne. “I wish I knew how I am to face Martin at breakfast tomorrow! I cannot do it!”

“Oh, there will not be the smallest difficulty!” Miss Morville pointed out. “It is tomorrow already, and if you partake of breakfast at all it will be in this room, and not until many hours after the gentlemen have eaten theirs.”

This practical response was not very well-received, Marianne saying rather pettishly that Drusilla seemed not to enter into her feelings at all, and pointing out that whether it was at the breakfast-table or at the dinner-table her next meeting with Martin must cause her insupportable embarrassment.

“I daresay it will cause him embarrassment too,” observed Miss Morville, “so the sooner you have met, and can put it all behind you, the easier you will be.”

“If only I might go home!” Marianne said.

“Well, and so you will, in a day or two. To run away immediately would be to give rise to the sort of comment I am sure you would not like; and, you know, you can scarcely continue to reside in the same neighbourhood without encountering Martin.”

There could be no denying the good-sense of this remark. Marianne shed a few tears; and after animadverting indignantly on Martin’s folly, effrontry, and ill-breeding, turned from the contemplation of his depraved character to dwell with gratitude on the exquisite tact and kindness of Lord Ulverston.

“I can never be sufficiently obliged to him!” she declared. “I am persuaded he cannot have remained in ignorance of my distress, for I was so much mortified I could scarcely speak, and as for meeting his gaze, it was wholly beyond my power! I was ready to sink for fear he should ask me what was the matter, but he never did! There was something so very kind in the way he offered me his arm, and took me to drink a glass of lemonade, saying it was insufferably hot in the ballroom, and should I not like to go where it was cooler? And then, you know, we talked of all manner of things, until I was comfortable again, and I do think there was never anyone more good-natured.”

Miss Morville was very ready to encourage her in these happier reflections; and by dint of pointing out how sad it would be for Marianne to leave Stanyon before she had become better acquainted with his lordship, soon prevailed upon her to abandon this scheme. If her young friend’s artless panegyric left her with the suspicion that an embrace from the Viscount would have awakened no outraged feelings in her breast, this was a thought which she was wise enough to keep to herself.

Marianne was sure that she would be unable to close her eyes for what remained of the night. However that might have been, they were very peacefully closed for long after Miss Morville had left her bedchamber later in the morning. Miss Morville peeped into her room, but Marianne did not stir, and she left her to have her sleep out.

Only the gentlemen appeared at the breakfast-table, but by eleven o’clock most of the ladies had come downstairs from their rooms, including Lady Grampound, who seemed to have risen for no other purpose than to ensure that her sons were given rides by Martin. Upon his not unreasonably demurring at this demand, compliance with which must remove him from the Castle before any of the visitors had departed, she said that to oblige his nephews was the least he could do: an oblique reference to his misconduct which provoked him into replying that if giving rides to her brats would make her departure from Stanyon that day a certainty he would be happy to do it.

By noon, all the ball-guests except the Grampounds had left the Castle, and the Dowager was free to discuss the evening’s festivity with anyone so unwise as to approach her chair, to congratulate herself upon the excellence of the supper, and to enumerate all the guests who had been particularly gratified to have received invitations. In this innocuous amusement she was joined by her daughter, who could not conceive of greater bliss for her fellow-creatures than to find themselves at Stanyon, and who had further cause for complacence in having had her gown admired by the Duchess. The tempestuous entrance into the room of Harry and John, bursting to tell their Mama about the rides they had enjoyed, caused an interruption. Conversation became impossible, for when they had stopped shouting their news in unison to Lady Grampound they fell out over the rights of primogeniture, Harry contending that to ransack the contents of Grandmama’s netting-box was his privilege, and Johnny very hotly combating such a suggestion.

“Dear little fellows!” said the Dowager. “They would like to play a game, I daresay. How much they enjoyed playing at spillikins with dear Marianne yesterday!”

“Yes, indeed, Mama, but pray do not put it into their heads to do so again, for I told them they must not tease Miss Bolderwood to repeat her kindness.”

Marianne, who was engaged in restoring its contents to the netting-box, took the hint. She insisted that she would be very happy to play with the children, and went away to find the spillikins, while Lady Grampound informed her offspring of the treat in store for them. By the time Marianne returned, peace had been restored, even Johnny’s yells at being shrewdly kicked by his brother having ceased at the sight of a box of sugar-plums.

When Martin presently came into the room with Lord Ulverston, Marianne was too much engrossed with the game to accord him more than a brief, shy greeting. He said awkwardly that it was a particularly fine day, so that he thought she might care to walk in the shrubbery before luncheon was served. She declined it, and a moment later he had the mortification of seeing Ulverston join the spillikin-party, and receive a very welcoming smile and blush.

The Grampounds were to leave Stanyon during the afternoon, and while the party sat round the table in one of the saloons, eating cold meat and fruit, Lord Grampound expressed a wish to visit a house in the neighbourhood which he had some thought of hiring for the accommodation of his family during the summer months. This led his wife to explain in detail the extensive improvements which were to be put in hand at Grampound Manor, the fatal effects of Brighton air upon Harry’s liverish constitution, and her own ardent desire to spend the summer within reach of Stanyon. The Dowager, loftily disregarding her stepson’s claims to be consulted in the matter, at once invited her daughter to come to Stanyon itself, and to remain there for as long as she pleased, an invitation which her ladyship would certainly have accepted had Lord Grampound not intervened to say with great firmness that he preferred to hire a house of his own.

“I daresay it may be best, my love,” agreed his wife. “Not but what it would be pleasant for Mama to have the children at Stanyon for a really long stay, and I am sure I do not know where they would be happier. However, I do not mean to be setting myself up in opposition, and it shall be as you wish. The only thing is that I do not perfectly recollect the way to Kentham. Martin, you shall ride with Grampound as far as the house, for I am persuaded you must know how best to reach it, and then we can see it together, and you will be back at Stanyon in time for dinner.”

This cool disposal of his time exasperated Martin into saying: “A delightful scheme, Louisa, but I have something else to do this afternoon!”

“Nonsense! what can you possibly have to do?” she replied. “You only wish to be disobliging, and may very well go with us, if you choose.”

He was silent.

Lord Grampound cleared his throat. “I should be happy to have Martin’s company on the road, but if he does not care to go with us, I shall refrain from pressing him.”

Martin was still silent, and Gervase, feeling that he had borne enough, interposed, saying: “If you will accept my escort, Grampound, I shall be glad to go with you. I don’t promise to lead you aright, but I fancy I have a general notion of where Kentham lies.”

His lordship accepted this offer. Martin was conscious of a feeling of gratitude, which, however, was speedily dispelled by his sister, who read him a homily on conduct, and ended by drawing an unflattering comparison between his manners and those of his brother.

“You may as well stop prosing to me!” he said hastily, thrusting back his chair from the table. “St. Erth is perfection itself, of course! If you toad-eat him enough I daresay he will second my mother’s invitation to you to spend the summer at Stanyon!”

“Be quiet, you young fool!” said Theo, under his breath.

“Don’t disturb yourself! I’m going!” Martin snapped, and flung himself out of the room.

Marianne could not doubt that his refusal to accompany the Grampounds arose from his determination to engage her in private conversation. He had made two attempts already to detach her from the rest of the party, and since she did not know what to say to him if he offered an apology, or how to repulse him if he tried to renew his love-making, she was thrown into a flutter of nerves, and so earnestly begged Miss Morville not to leave her side for an instant that Drusilla, who had meant to walk across the Park to her own home, to perform some few duties there, was obliged to abandon her design. Until the Grampounds took their departure, everyone lingered in the Castle, but when, not more than an hour later than had been intended, and after only two false starts, the coaches, preceded by the Earl and his brother-in-law on horseback, at last passed under the Gate Tower, and bowled away through the Park, there was nothing to keep the remaining company within doors any longer. Miss Morville suggested the refreshment of a walk in the shrubbery to Marianne, and thither they repaired, enjoying the bright spring sunshine, and talking over such aspects of the ball as Marianne could bear to recall without pain. The painful episode, however, was bound to obtrude, and although a night’s repose had to a great extent soothed Marianne’s more exaggerated reflections, she confided in Miss Morville that although she had previously thought her Mama very old-fashioned to allow her to go nowhere without her chaperonage, she now saw how dangerous it was for a female to be alone with a young man.

After they had been walking about the paths for a little while, they were joined by Lord Ulverston. He had an arm for both ladies, but it was not long before Miss Morville perceived herself to be unnecessary either to his comfort or to Marianne’s. She ventured to suggest that she should leave them, to go on her interrupted errand to Gilbourne House. Beyond saying: “Must you go indeed? You will be so tired, after dancing all night!” Marianne made no objection. The dangers attached to finding herself alone with a young man were forgotten; and since Miss Morville had perfect confidence in Lord Ulverston’s ability to keep whatever ardour he might feel within the bounds of the strictest propriety, she had no hesitation in leaving him to entertain her friend.

She was met at Gilbourne House by the housekeeper, who had a great many problems to lay before her, and a great many grievances to pour into her ears. Not the least of these was the shocking ingratitude, selfishness, and duplicity of one of the maids, who, having been given permission to spend a night at her own home in the village, had, instead of returning in good time upon the following morning, sent up a message to the house that she had had the misfortune to sprain her ankle, and could not set her foot to the ground. As the village lay a mile beyond Gilbourne House, it was not to be expected that stout Mrs. Buxton could go there to verify the truth of this message; but she informed Miss Morville darkly that she had always suspected the errant damsel of flightiness.

Miss Morville did not share this suspicion, but she promised to visit Kitty’s home, for she had a strong sense of duty, and had been bred up by her progressive parents to think the well-being of her dependents particularly her concern.

So after a slight argument with Mrs. Buxton, who, by no means as progressive as her master and mistress, desired her not to go to the village without taking a manservant with her to act as escort, and to carry her basket, Miss Morville set out to visit the sufferer.

She found the case to be exactly as had been stated, poor Kitty’s ankle being very much swollen. Her offerings of arnica, eggs, and a cheese wrested from Mrs. Buxton’s jealously guarded storeroom, were accepted with thanks, and some doubt, Kitty’s mother being of the unshakable opinion that nothing could do more good to sprains, sores, chilblains, and a variety of other ills, than goose-fat, well rubbed in. But a visit from Miss Morville was at once an honour and a pleasure. She must be taken into the tiny parlour, regaled with juniper wine, and the whole history of Kitty’s accident, and thanked again and again for her condescension. The hour was consequently rather far advanced when Drusilla at last left the cottage, and it was beginning to be dusk. She had only a little way to walk, however, before she was able to enter the Park, by one of its subsidiary gates. An avenue led from the gate to the stables, and the kitchen-court, but it was circuitous, and the quickest way was through the Home Wood, by one of the pleasant rides which led to the main avenue.

The wood was full of shadows, and already a little chilly, after the setting of the sun, but Miss Morville, neither so fashionable as to disdain wearing a warm pelisse, nor so delicate as to be unable to walk at a brisk pace, suffered no discomfort. She did not even imagine, when some small animal stirred in the undergrowth, that she was being followed; and was so insensible as to remain impervious to the alarm which might have been caused by the sudden scutter of a rabbit across the path. A quarter of an hour’s quick walking brought her to within sight of the main avenue. The thud of a horse’s hooves came to her ears, which led her to suppose, not that a desperate, and probably masked, brigand approached, but that the Earl, having parted from the Grampounds, was on his way back to the Castle. She was right: in another instant, she had a brief vision of Cloud, cantering along the grass verge beside the avenue. Since she was walking almost at right angles to the avenue, Cloud and his rider were swiftly hidden from her sight, as they passed the opening of the ride, and became obscured by the trees and the bushes which bordered the avenue. But although she could no longer see the horse and his rider, she could still hear the thud of the hooves, and when these ceased abruptly, to be succeeded by the unmistakable sound of a fall, followed by the scrabble of hooves on loose stones, and the clatter of a bolting horse, she was not so prosaically-minded as to suppose that these sounds could have been caused by anything other than an accident. It seemed odd that the Earl should have taken a toss on a smooth stretch of turf, but without pausing to consider the improbability of such an occurrence Miss Morville picked up her skirts and ran forward as quickly as she could. Within a very few seconds she had reached the avenue, to be confronted by a startling sight. Of Cloud there was no sign, but his rider lay motionless across the narrow grass verge, his head and shoulders resting on the avenue. This circumstance, as Miss Morville realized, was enough to account for his having been stunned. She dropped to her knees beside his inanimate form, and without the smallest hesitation ripped open his coat to feel the beat of his heart.

The Earl regained consciousness to find himself lying with his head in Miss Morville’s lap, his elaborate Mail-coach cravat untied, and the scent of aromatic vinegar in his nostrils. Gazing bemusedly up into the concerned face bent over him, he uttered, a trifle thickly: “Good God! I fell!”

“Yes,” agreed Miss Morville, removing her vinaigrette from under his nose. “I cannot discover, my lord, that any limb is broken, but I might be mistaken. Can you move your arms and your legs?”

“Lord, yes! There are no bones broken!” he replied, struggling up to a sitting posture, and clasping his head between his hands. “But I don’t understand! How in the devil’s name came I — Where’s my horse?”

“I expect,” said Miss Morville, “that he has bolted for his stable, for there was no sign of him when I reached your side. Do not disturb yourself on his account! He could scarcely have done so had he sustained any injury! It is, in fact, a fortunate circumstance that he bolted, for he will give the alarm, you know, and since your groom knows in which direction you rode out we may shortly expect to receive succour.”

He uttered a shaken laugh. “You think of everything, ma’am!”

“I may think of everything,” said Miss Morville, “but I am not always able to accomplish all I should wish to! My chief desire has been to procure water with which to revive you, but, in the circumstances, I scarcely dared to leave your side. I do not think,from what I can observe, that you have broken your collar-bone.”

“I am very sure I have not, ma’am. I have merely broken my head!”

“Does it pain you very much?” she asked solicitiously.

“Why, yes! It aches like the very deuce, but not, I assure you, as much as does my self-esteem! How came I to fall, like the rawest of greenhorns?” He received no answer to this, and added, with an effort towards playfulness: “But I forget my manners! I must thank you for preserving my life, Miss Morville — even though it may have been at the cost of my cravat!”

“I am not, in general,” said Miss Morville carefully, “an advocate for the employment of hyperbole in describing trifling services, but I believe, my lord, that in this instance I may be justly said to have done so.”

He was engaged, with only slightly unsteady fingers, in loosely knotting the ruined cravat about his throat, but at these words he paused in his task to frown at her in some bewilderment. “I collect that in this uncertain light I must have been so careless as to let Cloud set his foot in a rabbit-burrow. I own, I have no very clear remembrance of what occurred, but — ”

“No,” said Miss Morville.

He looked intently at her. “No?”

“You have been unconscious for several minutes, sir,” said Miss Morville. “When once I had ascertained that your heart still beat strongly, I had leisure to look about me, to discover, if I might, what had been the cause of the accident. I am excessively reluctant to add to your present discomforts, but I must request you, in your own interests, to look at what met my eyes a minute or two ago.”

The Earl’s surprised gaze obediently followed the direction of her pointing finger, and alighted upon a length of thin, yet stout, cord, which lay on the ground across the avenue, to disappear into the thicket beyond.

“You will observe,” said Miss Morville dispassionately, “that the cord is attached to one of the lower branches of that tree upon your left hand. I have been trying to puzzle it out in my mind, and I am strongly of the opinion, my lord, that if the other end of the cord were to be held by some person standing concealed in the thicket to your right, it would be a simple matter for such a person suddenly to pull it taut across the path at the very moment when your horse was abreast of it.”

There was a moment’s silence; then the Earl said: “Your power of observation is acute, ma’am. But what a happiness to be assured that I fell from no negligence of my own!”

She seemed to approve of this light-hearted response, for she smiled, and said: “I am sure you must be much relieved, my lord.” She was then silent for a short space, adding presently: “To be attaching exaggerated importance to trifling circumstances is what I have no patience with, but I cannot conceal from you, my lord, that I do not at all like what has occurred!”

“You express yourself with praiseworthy moderation, Miss Morville,” Gervase returned, rising to his feet, and brushing the dirt from his coat. “I will own that for my part I dislike it excessively!”

“If,” she said, holding her hands rather tightly clasped in her lap, “I could rid my mind of the horrid suspicion that only my unlooked-for presence, here is the cause of your being alive at this moment, I should feel very much more comfortable.”

He held down his hand to her. “Come, get up, ma’am! You will take cold if you continue to sit on the damp ground. My case was not likely to be desperate, you know. I might, of course, have broken my neck, but the greater probability was that I should come off with a few bruises, as indeed I have, or with a broken limb at the worst.”

She accepted his assistance in rising to her feet, but said with a little asperity: “To be sure, there is not the least reason why you should credit me with common-sense, for I daresay I may never have warned you that although I am not bookish I have a tolerably good understanding! My fault is a lack of imagination which makes it impossible for me to believe that a cord was stretched across your path by some mischance — or even,” she added tartly, “by supernatural agency, so pray do not try to entertain me with any of your nonsensical ghost-stories, sir, for I am not in the mood for them!”

He laughed. “No, no, I know your mind to be hardened against them, ma’am! Let us admit at once that a cord was tied to that tree, and allowed to lie unnoticed across the avenue until my horse was abreast of it. There can be little doubt that it was then jerked tight, an action which, I judge, must have brought it to the level of Cloud’s knees. That he came down very suddenly I recall, and also that I was flung over his head.”

“Who did it?” she said abruptly.

“I don’t know, Miss Morville. Do you?”

She shook her head. “There was no one in sight when I ran out into the avenue. I looked for no one, for I had then no suspicion that the accident had been contrived, but I think I must have noticed anyone moving by the thicket.”

“You could not have done so had he stood behind the thicket. Was it long after I fell that you came up with me? By the by, where were you, ma’am? I did not see you!”

“No, for I was walking along that ride, coming from the village, you know,” she replied, nodding towards the path. “You would only have perceived me had you chanced to turn your head, and from the thicket I must have been wholly obscured. I heard the fall, and you may readily suppose that I wasted no time in running to the spot — it cannot have been more than a matter of seconds before I had reached the end of the ride. It must have been impossible for anyone to have had sufficient time between your fall and my coming into view to have removed that cord, or — ”

She stopped. He prompted her gently: “Or, Miss Morville?”

“Excuse me!” she begged. “I had nearly said what must have given you reason to suppose that I have a disordered intellect! I believe that the shock of seeing you stretched lifeless upon the ground has a little overset my nerves.”

“You mean, do you not, that the finishing blow might have been dealt me while I lay senseless, had you not been at hand to frighten away my assailant?”

“I did mean that,” she confessed. “The misadventure you escaped at the bridge the other day must have been in my mind, perhaps.”

So you knew about that!”

“Everyone knows of it. One of the servants heard your cousin rating Martin for — for his carelessness in forgetting to warn you. You must know how quickly gossip will spread in a large household! But if it was indeed Martin who brought your horse down, I am persuaded he did not mean to kill you!”

“Just a boyish prank, Miss Morville?” Gervase said.

“It was very bad, of course, for he could not know that the accident would not prove to be fatal. When his temper is roused, there is no saying what he will do. He seems not to care — But I own this goes beyond anything I should have thought it possible for him to do! There is no understanding it, for he is by no means a genius, so that we cannot excuse him on the score of eccentricity.”

His head was aching, but he was obliged to smile. “Is it your experience that geniuses are apt to perform such violent deeds, ma’am?”

“Well, they frequently behave very irrationally,” she replied. “History, I believe, affords us many examples of peculiar conduct on the part of those whose intellects are of an elevated order; and within my own knowledge there is the sad case of poor Miss Mary Lamb, who murdered her mama, in a fit of aberration. Then, too, Miss Wollstonecraft, who was once a friend of my mother’s, cast herself into the Thames, and she,you know, had a most superior intellect.”

“Cast herself into the Thames!” echoed the Earl.

“Yes, at Putney. She had meant to commit the dreadful deed at Battersea, but found the bridge there too crowded, and so was obliged to row herself to Putney. She was picked up by a passing boat, and afterwards married Mr. Godwin, which quite turned her thoughts from suicide. Not that I should have thought it a preferable fate,” said Miss Morville reflectively, “but, then, I am not at all partial to Mr. Godwin. In fact, though I never met him — nor, indeed, Miss Wollstonecraft, either — I have often thought I should have liked Mr. Imlay better than Mr. Godwin. He was an American, with whom Miss Wollstonecraft had an unhappy connection, and although a great many harsh things have been said about him, Mama has always maintained that most of the trouble arose from Miss Wollstonecraft’s determination to make him an elm-tree round which she might throw her tendrils. Very few gentlemen could, I believe, support for long so arduous a role.”

“I find myself, as always, in entire agreement with you, Miss Morville,” he said gravely. “But do you wish me to suppose that a deranged mind was responsible for my accident?”

“By no means. Martin has too little control over his passions, but he cannot be thought to be deranged. Indeed, I cannot account for your accident, except by a solution which I am persuaded is not the correct one.”

He smiled slightly. “I have a great dependence on your discretion, Miss Morville. We shall say, if you please, that I was so heedless as to let Cloud set his foot in a rabbit-hole. Meanwhile, I think it would be well if I gathered up this cord, and stowed it away in my pocket.”

She watched him do so in silence, but when he had untied the cord from about the tree, and had returned to her, she said: “I think you perfectly able to manage your own affairs, my lord, and I shall certainly not interfere in them. But, absurd though it may seem to you, this incident has made me feel apprehensive, and I do trust that you will take care how you expose yourself while you remain at Stanyon!”

“Why, yes, to the best of my power I will do so,” he answered. “But nothing will be gained through my noising this trick abroad: whoever was responsible for it knows that his design was frustrated, and he is not very likely to betray himself. I must suppose that everyone at Stanyon knew that I should return to the Castle by this road. Who, by the way, knew of your visit to the village?”

“No one, and only Marianne and Lord Ulverston can have known that I went to Gilbourne House.”

“That is no help at all. I never suspected Lucy of wishing to put a period to my life!” he said, smiling.

Chapter 11

They began to walk slowly down the avenue in the direction of the Castle, the Earl assuring Miss Morville that apart from an aching skull he had sustained no injury from his fall. They had not proceeded far on their way when they heard the sound of an approaching vehicle, being driven towards them at a furious pace. “If this is Chard, springing my grays, I will very soon give him something else to alarm him out of his senses!” said the Earl.

But the four horses which almost immediately swept round the bend ahead of them were not grays, nor was Chard driving them. He sat perched up beside Lord Ulverston, who had the ribbons in his hands, and was encouraging his team to gallop down the avenue.

The Earl drew Miss Morville on the grass verge, but the Viscount had already perceived him, and was checking his horses. They pulled up, very much on the fret, and the Earl called out: “If I had guessed this was how you meant to use my bays I swear I would never have sold them to you, Lucy! Four-Horse Club, indeed! The veriest whipster!”

“Good God, Ger, what a fright you have given us!” the Viscount said indignantly. “I had just come in from tooling Miss Bolderwood about the country for an hour, when Cloud came bolting into the yard, in a lather, and with his legs cut about! I thought you must have put him at regular stitcher, and taken a bad toss!”

“I took a toss, but not at a stitcher. A common rabbit-hole was the cause of my downfall.”

“A rabbit-hole? You? ”exclaimed Ulverston incredulously.

“Don’t roast me! We all have our lapses!”

“Where is this famous rabbit-hole?”

“Oh, in the Park! I would not engage to point you out the precise one: there are so many of them!”

“Exactly so! So many that you ride with a slack bridle, and your head in the clouds, and, when you part company, leave go of the rein! Gammon, dear boy, gammon!”

“How badly are my horse’s legs cut?” interrupted Gervase. “That is the worst feature of the business!”

Chard, who had jumped down from the curricle, and had been listening to him with a puzzled frown on his face, said that he thought the injuries were hardly more than grazes. “I handed him over to Jem, me lord, not knowing what kind of an embarazo you was got into, and thinking you might need me more than the horse.”

“Nonsense! Is it likely I could be in serious trouble?”

“As to that, me lord, there’s no saying what trouble you could be in,” replied his henchman bluntly. “All I know is I never knew your horse to come home without you before!”

By this time, the Viscount had turned the curricle about, and was commanding Gervase to climb into it.

“Certainly not! It is Miss Morville whom you shall drive, Lucy, not me!”

“Take you both!” said the Viscount. “You won’t mind being a trifle crowded, ma’am? Come, Ger, no playing the fool with me! I don’t know how you came to do it, but it’s as plain as a pikestaff you took a bad toss! Shaken to pieces, I daresay — your cravat is, at all events! Never saw you look such a quiz in my life!”

Thus adjured, the Earl handed Miss Morville up into the curricle, and climbed in after her. The Viscount observed that it was a fortunate circumstance that they were none of them fat; Chard swung himself up behind, and the horses were put into motion.

“Tell you another thing, Ger, about this precious rumble of yours!” said the Viscount. “Can’t see how — ” He broke off, for the Earl, who had flung one arm across the back of the driving-seat, in an attempt to make more room for Miss Morville, moved his hand to his friend’s shoulder, and gripped it warningly. “Oh, well! No sense talking about it!” he said.

They were soon bowling through the archway of the Gate Tower. Miss Morville was set down at the Castle, but the Earl insisted on driving to the stables, to examine Cloud’s hurts. Here they found Theo, also engaged on this task. He came out into the yard at the noise of the curricle’s approach, and said, in his unemotional way: “Well, I am glad to see you safe and sound, Gervase! Pray, what have you been doing?”

“Merely coming to grief through my own folly,” replied Gervase, alighting from the curricle. “In the failing light I didn’t perceive a rabbit-hole, that is all!”

“My dear St. Erth, your horse never cut his knees stumbling into rabbit-holes!” expostulated Theo. “I thought, when I saw him, you must have put him at a stone wall!”

“Are they badly damaged?”

“I hope not. He has done little more than scratch himself. Whether he will be scarred or not, I can’t tell. I’ve directed your man to apply hot fomentations.”

The Earl nodded, and went past him into the stable, followed by Chard. Theo looked up at the Viscount with a questioning lift to his brows.

“No good asking me!” Ulverston said, correctly interpreting the look. “He don’t want it talked of, that’s all I know. Where’s that damned fellow of mine? Clarence! Hi, there, come and take the horses in, wherever you are!”

His groom came running up. The Viscount relinquished the team into his care, and jumped down from the curricle. “Where’s young Frant?” he asked abruptly.

“Martin? I don’t know,” Theo replied, a surprised inflexion in his voice.

“Mr. Frant went out with his gun a while back, my lord,” offered Clarence.

“Oh, he did, did he? Very well; that’ll do!”

“What’s this, Ulverston?” Theo said, drawing him out of earshot of the groom. “What has Martin to do with it?”

“I don’t know, but if you can believe all this humdudgeon of Ger’s about falling into rabbit-holes, I can’t! Part company he might; leave go of his rein he would not! No wish to meddle in what don’t concern me, but Ger’s a friend of mine. Fancy he’s a friend of yours too. Don’t know what it was, but something happened to him he don’t mean to tell us about. Dash it, I haven’t spent three days here without seeing that that young cub of a brother of his would do him a mischief if he could!”

Theo was frowningly silent. After a moment, the Viscount said: “Quarrelled last night, didn’t they? Oh, you needn’t be so discreet! I walked into the middle of it! Got a shrewd notion I know what it was about, too.”

“They did quarrel, but I believe it was not serious. Martin is hot-tempered, and will often say what he does not mean.”

“What’s the matter with the fellow?” demanded the Viscount. “Seems to live in the sulks!”

Theo smiled faintly. “He has certainly done so ever since St. Erth came home, but he can be pleasant enough when he likes.”

“Pity he doesn’t like more often! Does he dislike Ger?”

“He is jealous of him. I think you must have realized that. St. Erth has inherited what Martin has always regarded as his own. I hope he may soon perceive the folly of his behavior. Indeed, I believe he must, for there is not a better fellow living than Gervase, and that Martin will be bound to discover before he is much older.”

“But this is Gothick, Frant, quite Gothick!” objected Ulverston.

“Well, in some ways I think Martin is rather Gothick!” said Theo. “His disposition is imperious; his will never was thwarted while his father lived; nor was he taught to control his passions. Everything that he wanted he was given; and, worse than all, he was treated as though he had been the heir, and Gervase did not exist.”

“Went to school, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he followed Gervase to Eton.”

“Well, don’t tell me his will wasn’t thwarted there!” said Ulverston. “Doing it too brown, dear fellow! I was at Eton m’self!”

“You were perhaps not so much indulged at home. With Martin, the influence of school counted for nothing once he was back at Stanyon.”

They were interrupted by the Earl, who, coming up behind them, said lightly: “What treason are you hatching, the pair of you? I don’t think Cloud’s legs will be marked.”

“Gervase, are you concealing something from us?” asked Theo bluntly.

“Oh, so Lucy has been telling you that I have never been known to let my rein go, has he? I thank you for the compliment, Lucy, but it is undeserved. Now I think I should do well to slip into the house unobserved, for if Martin were to catch a glimpse of my cravat in its present lamentable condition he would cease to think me a dandy, and that would be a sad disappointment to both of us.”

“Martin ain’t in the house,” said the Viscount. “He went out with his gun, my man tells me.”

“Ah, did he? He is the most indefatigable sportsman! I have not yet seen him riding to hounds — neck-or-nothing, I feel tolerably certain! — but he is an excellent shot. Lucy, I never thanked you for coming so heroically to my rescue! My dear fellow, I could not be more grateful if I had needed you!”

“Bamming, Ger, bamming! I know this humour, and shan’t be taken-in!”

The Earl laughed, kissed the tips of his fingers to him, and vanished into the Castle.

He was received in his bedchamber by Turvey, who palpably winced at the sight of him. “I know, Turvey, I know!” he said. “My coat will never be the same again, do what you will, and I am sure you will do everything imaginable! As for my cravat, I might as well wear a Belcher handkerchief, might I not?”

“I am relieved to see that your lordship has sustained no serious injury,” responded Turvey repressively.

“You must be astonished, I daresay, for you believe me to be a very fragile creature, don’t you?”

“The tidings which were brought to the Castle by Miss Bolderwood were of a sufficiently alarming nature to occasion anxiety, my lord.”

“Oh, so that is how the news was spread!”

“Miss Bolderwood had but just stepped down from my Lord Ulverston’s curricle when your lordship’s horse bolted past them. I understand that the young lady sustained a severe shock. Permit me, my lord, to relieve you of your coat!”

The Earl was seated at his dressing-table when, some twenty minutes later, Ulverston came into his room. He was dressed in his shirt and his satin knee-breeches, and was engaged on the delicate operation of arranging the folds of a fresh cravat into the style known as the Napoleon. At his elbow stood Turvey, intently watching the movements of his slender fingers. A number of starched cravats hung over the valet’s forearm, and three or four crumpled wrecks lay on the floor at his feet. The Earl’s eyes lifted briefly to observe his friend in the mirror. “Hush!” he said. “Pray do not speak, Lucy, or do anything to distract my attention!”

“Fop!” said the Viscount.

Turvey glanced at him reproachfully, but Gervase paid no heed. He finished tying the cravat, gazed thoughtfully at his reflection for perhaps ten seconds, while Turvey held his breath, and then said: “My coat, Turvey!”

A deep sigh was breathed by the valet. He carefully disposed the unwanted cravats across the back of a chair, and picked up a coat of dark blue cloth.